Arming Slaves

Since its founding in 1998, The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, which is part of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, has sponsored an annual international conference on
major aspects of the chattel slave system, its ultimate destruction, and its
legacies in America and around the world. The Centers mission is, one, to
increase knowledge of this story across time and all boundaries, and, two, to
reach out to broader publics which demonstrate a growing desire to understand race, slavery, abolition, and the extended meanings of this history over
time. Because the research, discoveries, and narratives presented at our conferences do so much to enrich our knowledge of one of humanitys most
dehumanizing institutions and its place in the founding of the modern world,
as well as of the rst historical movements for human rights, we are immensely
grateful to Yale University Press for engaging in this joint publication venture.
The Gilder Lehrman Center is supported by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, generous Yale alumni and devoted patrons of American history. The
Center aspires, with Yale University Press, to offer to the broadest possible audience the best modern scholarship on a story of global and lasting
signicance.
david w. blight, Class of 1954 Professor of History at Yale University,
and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Edited by

CHRISTOPHER LESLIE BROWN

and P H I L I P D . M O R G A N

Arming Slaves
FROM CLASSICAL TIMES TO
THE MODERN AGE

Yale University Press

New Haven &
London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip

Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College.
Copyright 2006 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from
the publishers.
Set in Sabon Roman types by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arming slaves : from classical times to the modern age / edited by Christopher Leslie
Brown and Philip D. Morgan.
p. cm.
Based on lectures from a conference in Fall 2000 at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the
Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-300-10900-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-300-10900-8
1. Slave soldiersHistory. I. Brown, Christopher Leslie. II. Morgan Philip D., 1949
III. Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
ub416.a86 2006
355.3%308625dc22
2005026285
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.
10

In memory of Thomas E. J. Weidemann

Contents

Maps ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction, by David Brion Davis 1
Arming Slaves and Helots in Classical Greece, by Peter Hunt 14
The Mamluk
Institution, or One Thousand Years of Military Slavery in the
Islamic World, by Reuven Amitai 40
Armed Slaves and Political Authority in Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade,
14501800, by John Thornton 79
Making the Chikunda: Military Slavery and Ethnicity in Southern Africa,
17501900, by Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson 95
Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals: Arming Slaves in Colonial Spanish
America, by Jane Landers 120
Arming Slaves in Brazil from the Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth
Century, by Hendrik Kraay 146
Arming Slaves in the American Revolution, by Philip D. Morgan and
Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy 180

viii

Contents

The Arming of Slaves in the Haitian Revolution, by David Geggus 209

Citizen Soldiers: Emancipation and Military Service in the Revolutionary
French Caribbean, by Laurent Dubois 233
The Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America: From Independence to
Abolition, by Peter Blanchard 255
Armed Slaves and the Struggles for Republican Liberty in the U.S. Civil War,
by Joseph P. Reidy 274
Armed Slaves and Anticolonial Insurgency in Late Nineteenth-Century Cuba,
by Ada Ferrer 304
The Arming of Slaves in Comparative Perspective,
by Christopher Leslie Brown 330
List of Contributors 354
Index 356

Classical Greece

Seville

Valencia

250

500

Cartagena

Madrid

750 km

Rome

R T

Athens
Sparta

MEDITERRANEAN SEA

SICILY

Edessa
GREECE

EGYPT

Cairo

Al-Mansura

Acre

A N AT O L I A

Damascus

SYRIA

Aleppo

Jerusalem

TURKEY

BLACK SEA

Tigris

Eu

Mosul

Baghdad

IRAQ

ARABIAN
PENINSULA

er

Persian
Gulf

IRAN

CASPIAN
SEA
AZARBAIJAN

C AUC
AS
US

iv
es R
rat
ph

RED

The Mediterranean and the Islamic World

MOROCCO

PORTUGAL

SPAIN

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

Paris

er
Riv

SEA

N il e R i v e r

Atlantic Africa

South America

The Caribbean

Acknowledgments

This book has its origins in a conference held at the Gilder Lehrman
Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University in
the fall of 2000. We thank its former director, David Brion Davis, Sterling
Professor of history emeritus, for inviting us to edit this book and allowing us
to expand its scope beyond the original set of papers delivered at the conference. The contributors to this volume took on their assignments with energy and good cheer and have awaited the results with patience. We deeply
appreciate their commitment to seeing this project through to completion.
Along the way we have received valuable assistance from the administrative
staff in the History Department at The Johns Hopkins University, in particular
Clayton Haywood, Shirley Hipley, and Ayanna Teal. Jessica Roney provided
editorial assistance at a crucial stage. At Yale University Press, Larisa Heimert,
Molly Egland, and Margaret Otzel offered enthusiastic support for this project from the beginning and outstanding professionalism throughout. Bill Nelson graciously and expeditiously assisted us with the maps. Our superb copyeditor, Jane Zanichkowsky, attended to the manuscript with expert care.
The premature death of Thomas E. J. Weidemann, professor of Latin and
founder of the Institute for the Study of Slavery at Nottingham University,

xv

xvi

Acknowledgments

robbed the international community of scholars of a leader. Although he did

not live to see this book in print, we hope that he would have approved.
Hilary-Anne Hallett and Barbara Morgan know well enough the labors that
made this book possible. We thank them for their wisdom, encouragement,
love, and support.

Introduction
david brion davis

To many readers, the subject of this bookarming slavesmay seem

self-contradictory, an oxymoron. If household slaves in Renaissance Italy and
Spain were customarily referred to as the domestic enemy, why would the
master class ever dream of supplying such inherent enemies with arms? At
rst thought, the very idea seems equivalent to providing the convicts in our
maximum-security penitentiaries with submachine guns and hand grenades.
But in addition to this fear of an armed Spartacus (the famed leader of a
Roman slave revolt) or of a Toussaint Louverture (who was called the black
Spartacus), slaves had often been stereotyped as cowardly Sambos who
were even less capable of combat than were the frail ladies of the house. Such
feminization or infantilization of male slaves was long used to reassure whites
in the American South. This ideology, combined with fear, long prevented the
Confederate government from seriously considering the arming of slaves until
the last months of the American Civil War. As Howell Cobb, a former senator
from Georgia and a Confederate major-general, put it: The moment you
resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you. . . . The day you
make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves
will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.
Yet in Ira Berlins prize-winning book Many Thousands Gone, we read that
English ofcials in colonial South Carolina, like their Spanish counterparts in

David Brion Davis

Florida, drafted slaves in time of war and regularly enlisted them in the colonys militia. Indeed, Berlin writes that between the settlement of the Carolinas in the late 1600s and the conclusion of the Yamasee War almost fty
years later, black slave soldiers helped repulse every Spanish and Indian attack
on the colony. This dramatic contrast between early colonial experience and a
Confederate policy based on a profoundly racist theory of slavery is precisely
the kind of subject we need to explore if we wish to understand both the
extraordinary importance and the complexity of the institution of slavery in
human history.
Because the chapters in this book consider examples that extend over thousands of years and that move from the ancient Mediterranean and early Islamic states to Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and on to the American
Civil War and to anticolonial insurgency in late nineteenth-century Cuba, they
illuminate some highly revealing samples taken from relatively unexplored
territory, a rich resource for the social and cultural understanding of human
nature.
Instead of attempting to summarize all the chapters, which bring continuing
surprises and even amazement, I would like to use some of them in a preliminary way to consider why some slaves would choose to ght for their masters
and how the arming of slaves, or the refusal to do so, deepens our understanding of the most exploitative of human institutions. Other major questions
raised by the chapters in this book are why the large-scale enlisting of slave
soldiers did not undermine slavery itself and whether the practice did nally
help destroy slavery after the Western world had begun to embrace a revolutionary ideology of individual freedom.
Slavery rst appeared in human history, according to the classical account,
when warriors realized that it would be more advantageous to secure the
services of captives than to kill them. The connection between homicide and
slavery persisted, however, since the slave might at any moment resume the
warfare that his capture had suspended, and the master might choose to kill
his slave for disobedience.
This image of warfare was the ground for John Lockes famous defense of
slavery in his Two Treatises of Government. According to Locke, who in
another section referred to slavery as so vile and miserable an Estate of
Man . . . that tis hardly to be conceived that an Englishman much less a
Gentleman, should plead for t, the origin of the institution was entirely
outside the social contract. When any man, by fault or act, forfeited his life to
another, according to Locke, he could not complain of injustice if his punishment was postponed by his being enslaved. If the hardships of bondage should
at any time outweigh the value of life, he could risk suicide by resisting his

Introduction

master and probably receiving the death he had all along deserved: This is the
perfect condition of Slavery, Locke wrote, which is nothing else, but the
state of War continued, between a lawful Conquerour, and a Captive.
Thus the relation between master and slave was one in which the obligations of the social compact were entirely suspended. And for Locke, presumably, it would be unthinkable in any situation for the lawful Conquerour to
provide arms to his captives, though on a less philosophical level Locke was an
investor in the slave-trading Royal African Company and corresponded with
Sir Peter Colleton, a resident of Barbados and a proprietor of the Carolinas.
Thus Locke, while drafting what might well be termed a proslavery constitution for South Carolina, may have been aware of the military prowess of many
Africans and of what legal scholars term the doctrine of necessity, or the
precedence of self-preservation over all other principles. At critical moments
in warfare, self-preservation might demand the risky enlistment of armed
slaves.
For example, the ancient view of slavery as a continuation of warfare is
evident when the Spartans felt it necessary to formally declare war once a year
on the defeated and slavelike Helots, presumably to remind the Helots of their
inferiority and subjugation. That said, as Peter Hunts chapter points out, the
Spartans did enlist many Helot slaves, despite their reputation for rebelliousness, as soldiers in land armies, especially in campaigns far from home.
As we learn from the thought-provoking chapters in this book, the doctrine
of necessity was often of ruling importance. As Hunt indicates, the ancient
Greeks and Romans often expressed a strong ideological aversion to enlisting
slaves in their armies, which were supposed to be composed of citizen soldiers
in the case of Athenians, hoplites, or independent farmers who were
known for their courage and reliability. Yet there were continuing emergencies
and manpower shortages that prompted the Greeks and especially the Romans to free slaves and then draft them for military service. Whether slaves
were used as rowers in the Athenian navy, as carriers of their hoplite owners
shields and armor, or as combat troops and looters, they became a source of
indispensable manpower, especially in long and desperate wars.
Aside from security, there was often a bitterly controversial conict between
the interests of individual slave owners and the military needs of a government
that might deprive such owners of their propertya form of tension that
would extend down through the ages to nineteenth-century wars. Another
barrier to the enlistment of slaves, going back at least to the time of ancient
Greece, was the widespread stereotype of slaves as the personication of childishness and cowardice. Yet even in the ancient world warring states did their
best to incite the rebellion or desertion of their enemys slaves, tactics that

David Brion Davis

suggested, at least, that slaves were domestic enemies who only needed to be
roused from their feelings of helplessness and defeat.
Moreover, as Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson show in their chapter
about the Chikunda, or military slaves in southern Africa from 1750 to
1900, the Portuguese and their descendants succeeded in creating a traditional
class of African slaves who saw themselves as erce conquerors. Facial tattoos,
special clothing, and body language reinforced the Chikundas celebration of
themselves as macho warriors, unrivaled in their courage, physical prowess,
and arrogance. Torn away and wholly separated from their natal families and
tribes, the Chikunda expressed bitter contempt for local indigenous groups; as
sharply dened outsiders, they were used not only in combat but in raids to
collect a continuing supply of slaves to ship to Brazil, as policemen and overseers, and as expert elephant hunters who could help meet the rising world
demand for ivory. But despite their bravado and seeming power, the Chikunda
were still slaves who lived and obeyed orders in a highly regimented world.
A few years ago, when I was an outside reader for a University of Toronto
doctoral dissertation subtitled Muslim, Eastern, and Black African Slaves in
Fifteenth-Century Valencia, I was very surprised to nd that in late medieval
Spain black slaves frequently served as armed personal bodyguards. Debra G.
Blumenthal, the author, points out that unlike the numerous Moorish slaves,
the black Africans could not be redeemed by nearby brethren or assimilated
into Valencian society. This natal alienation and social death, to use Orlando
Pattersons terms, made the blacks ideal bodyguards for their honor-obsessed
masters. According to Blumenthal, contemporary testimony reveals that
fteenth-century Valencians could not conceive of anyone more base or vile
than a black male slave. Therefore, in order to degrade their white enemies,
white masters would order their black bodyguards to ridicule, assault, and
batter their rivals or foes. Black slaves were also used to commit various crimes
for their masters.
I have now learned from some of this books chapters as well as from other
works that Valencias black bodyguards were by no means exceptional. The
Julio-Claudian Roman emperors of the rst century of the Common Era were
served by slave bodyguards taken from what is now Holland, at the fringe of
the empire. And as a protective empire disappeared in late Roman times, the
well-to-do increasingly relied on armed slaves as personal bodyguards, preferably slaves from distant regions (thus separating the slaves from families and
clans). Much later this practice spread to Brazil and to Spanish America.
Instead of conforming to Lockes picture of the slave as a defeated soldier in a
state of War continued, such bodyguards suggest Aristotles concept of the
slave as a tool or instrument, analogous to a loyal dog, carrying out his mas-

Introduction

ters will. They also bring to mind the Arabs and the Turks almost total
reliance on armies of generally loyal slaves purchased as children or adolescents from the distant Caspian and Black Sea regions and then trained to be
devoted protectors.
As the chapter by Reuven Amitai makes clear, these mamluks
represented a
highly distinctive kind of slavery even though they were bought and technically owned as property. If they were exploited as life-risking soldiers, the
mamluk
institution showed little intent to dehumanize the young warriors
who were highly disciplined in such arts as horsemanship and archery. Deprived of any family or tribal identity, they were expected to bond with one
another and especially with a patron or sultan to whom they would express
unconditional loyalty.
Unlike the ancient Greeks and Romans, or the many European peoples that
colonized the New World, the Muslims, beginning in the eighth century of the
Common Era, seemingly had no fear of or deep misgivings about the arming
of such preconditioned slaves. Like the later Chikunda, they were alienated
by origin, language, and upbringing from local indigenous populations. And
Muslim authorities continued to rely on fresh young recruits, not on the supposedly sedentary offspring or descendants of the mamluks,

who were male by

denition and in the beginning were mainly obtained from Anatolia (before it
became Turkey) and then from the Caucasian region between the Caspian and
Black Seas.
These Turkish and Caucasian troops played a decisive role in defeating the
Byzantine Christians, in conquering and creating Turkey, in ghting and
ultimately repelling European Crusaders from Egypt and the Holy Land, and
in stopping the invasions of Mongols (who nevertheless furnished more Caucasian slaves to Christian merchants as well as to Muslims). Even though some
mamluks
revolted and seized power for several centuries in northern India and
in Egypt and Syria (from the mid1200s to the early 1500s), this acquisition of
political authority failed to weaken the institution of slavery, which was sanctioned by Islamic law and persisted in various forms through much of the
twentieth century. Indeed, the Muslim Arabs and the Berbers were the ones
who initiated the long-distance trade in sub-Saharan African slaves. Over a
period of at least eleven centuries their desert caravans and Indian Ocean ships
transported untold millions of black slaves to the Mideast, northern Africa,
Sicily, and Spain.
Given the Moors long occupation of Portugal and Spain, the Iberian Christians could hardly have been better informed about the Muslim experience in
arming slaves and in developing a kind of proto-racism with regard to blacks.
And one can hardly exaggerate the importance of the fact that it was the

David Brion Davis

Spaniards and the Portuguese who rst explored, conquered, settled, and developed the Western Hemisphere. I refer to peoples who in 1492, with the
capture of Granada, the Moors last southern outpost in Spain, had just completed many centuries of so-called holy reconquest, often ghting armies that
included large numbers of black slaves; a people who expelled Jews, Moors,
and eventually Moriscos, or converted Muslims, while also enslaving and
exterminating the Guanches, or natives of the Canary Islands; a people who
had imported by sea thousands of black slaves from Africa and had established slave-worked sugar plantations in the so-called Atlantic islands west of
Africas coast; a people who would soon lead the Counter-Reformation and
do their best to prevent Protestant Dutch, English, and Scandinavian explorers
from establishing bases in the New World.
As the chapters by Jane Landers and Hendrik Kraay demonstrate, the Iberians armed slaves and free blacks and mulattoes from the very beginnings of
their New World conquests and settlements. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries the English, the Dutch, and the French similarly made
alliances with groups of black maroons who had escaped the Spaniards and
also recruited free blacks and slaves for naval warfare and raids on key Spanish settlements such as Cartagena. The Caribbean was a major theater of
warfare and piracy as well as a growing source of immense wealth as northern
European ships sought out Spanish galleons loaded with gold and silver and
as planters began to discover the enormous multinational market for slavegrown sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and cotton. French, English, and
Dutch privateers also captured many tons of sugar from Portuguese ships off
the Brazilian coast.
Because the Spanish lacked the European manpower to settle and defend
their vast territories from Florida to New Spain (Mexico) and Chile, they
relied on armies partly comprised of free and enslaved blacks as well as Indians, Moriscos, and even gypsies. As Landers points out, the tradition of
Roman law and the thirteenth-century Siete Partidas legitimated slavery but
also encouraged manumission as a reward for meritorious service to the state.
Thus many black slaves embraced military service as a route to freedom and
assimilation, and despite protests from white planters and soldiers, large numbers of free and enslaved militiamen defended Spains interests from Cuba to
Peru. Spanish authorities freed British slaves who ed from South Carolina to
Florida and from Jamaica to Cuba and also paid compensation to the Spanish
owners of slave soldiers killed in battle.
Although Spain, unlike revolutionary France, never moved toward a repudiation or even a serious questioning of slavery until after the American
Civil War, three of the black leaders of the Haitian Revolution (17911804)

Introduction

forged an alliance with Spain and fought valiantly against the French. Toussaint Louverture soon switched sides, but Biasou won medals for his bravery
and moved on to Spanish Florida, where he and other freed blacks could look
with contempt on the many white Spanish slaveholders.
Despite Spains use of armed slaves from the very beginning of its conquests
in the New World, racial slavery continued to ourish in Spanish Cuba and
Puerto Rico until the 1880s. But the practice of arming and freeing slaves had
very different consequences in the Spanish colonies that fought for independence much earlier in the nineteenth century. As Peter Blanchards chapter
shows, the arming of large numbers of slaves by both sides in the SpanishAmerican wars of independence helped undermine the institution from Mexico and Central America to Chile. Yet the proportion of slaves in most of the
Spanish colonies was roughly similar to that in the northern American states,
and the process of very gradual emancipation, following wartime and postwar
commitments, took about the same length of time in both regions.
The Portuguese, whose gigantic colony of Brazil absorbed more slaves from
Africa than did all the Spanish colonies combined, were far more reluctant to
create armies lled with slaves or newly freed slaves. As a true slave society,
whose massive production of sugar and coffee depended entirely on slave
labor and on the continuing importation of slaves from Africa, Brazilian ofcials were eager to prevent slaves from acquiring or carrying weapons, especially in the aftermath of slave insurrections. But Kraay also observes that the
private arming of slaves by their owners became routine on the lawless frontiers and during the hectic gold rush period in Minas Gerais. Yet even during
Brazils prolonged war with Paraguay from 1865 to 1870, the government
exercised great caution in arming freed slaves, which by then many saw as a
step toward emancipation, and the government also recognized the need to
compensate slaveowners, who were supposedly the only ones who could actually grant slaves freedom.
Most of the high points of arming Caribbean and North American slaves
came with the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and then the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Philip D. Morgan and Andrew J.
OShaughnessy point to how close the British came, in the American War of
Independence, to an enlistment of manumitted West Indian slaves and to the
use of some kind of emancipation proclamation to subvert what seemed to
them the most hypocritical cause, with the loudest yelps for liberty, as Samuel Johnson famously put it, coming from the drivers of negroes. In retrospect, it would appear that the American rebellion could have been demolished if Britain had turned to a massive and unqualied antislavery policy. Yet
with regard to hypocrisy, Britain was the worlds greatest slave-trading nation

David Brion Davis

in the eighteenth century, and the government could hardly ignore the pressures from merchants, West India planters and their agents, or loyalist slaveholders in the American South. As Morgan and OShaughnessy make evident,
the war devastated large regions of the South and led to the conscription of
large numbers of slaves in the British West Indies, many for duty on British
warships. Many thousands of American slaves deserted their owners and won
a dubious freedom, ending up, if they lived long enough, in Sierra Leone.
Other slaves, especially in the Upper South and the North, won manumission
as a reward for ghting against the British. Yet in 1790 and especially 1800
slavery was far stronger and more deeply entrenched in the United States than
it had been at the start of the Revolution (except in the Northern states).
In the Caribbean and Latin America, in striking contrast to post-seventeenthcentury North America, an immense gap in status usually separated slaves
from the often lighter-colored freedpeople. This meant that the liberation and
enlistment of selected slaves posed less danger to the institution of slavery and
did not enlarge a degraded and rootless population that whites longed to
deport or colonize, as in the United States. Moreover, there were many
black or colored slaveholders throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and
Louisiana (and a few even in South Carolina).
But the central point, in my opinion, is that the increasing use of armed
blacks from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century did not prevent
or appreciably slow down the development of an enormous plantation system
from Brazil to the Chesapeake and the Mississippi Valley. Indeed, beginning in
1795, as Roger Buckley, David Geggus, and other scholars have shown, Britains black West India Regiments, including many Africans who had just arrived on slave ships, saved and even expanded the British Caribbean slave
colonies during the Haitian Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
This startling and counterintuitive conclusion raises two important questions. First, why were European combatants willing to rely so heavily on slave
or former slave troops when British planters, for example, protested and predicted an undermining of the entire plantation system? Second, why were
black slaves and ex-slaves willing to ght for the slave regime after the Haitian
Revolution had begun? As David Geggus vividly shows, the British and the
Spanish were able to recruit large numbers of slaves even in Saint Domingue,
where blacks and free coloreds long fought on all sides.
After reading the chapters by Geggus and by Laurent Dubois, it would
appear that except for the nal years of the Haitian Revolution, combatants
and potential combatants in the Caribbean perceived no clear line dividing
whites from blacksa line equivalent to that dividing slaves from free persons. In part, I suspect that this lack of a clear racial distinction can be at-

Introduction

tributed to the large and expanding Caribbean populations of free coloreds, to

the natal alienation of slavery, and to the absence of any African nationalism
that would unite peoples of diverse African ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
In any event, as several of the chapters inform us, the white leaders in
the Caribbean faced a growing crisis as appalling numbers of European soldiers died from tropical diseases that had far less impact on people of African descent. Europeans also discovered with some dismay the military skills
of Africans, who knew the tactics of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungles
and mountainous regions. In theory, African capability meant that European
forces might have been crushed by a united African effort, as they eventually
were in Saint Domingue. But as it happened, skin color provided neither ethnic
nor racial unity, and black maroons, slaves, and former slaves could be enlisted to hunt down fugitives or suppress the revolts of other maroons or
slaves.
For slaves, military duty offered a welcome escape from the misery of plantation labor. The allure of a promise of freedom also entailed upward mobility, dignity, prestige, and the chance to prove ones manhood and to receive
awards that would impress ones peers as well as white authorities. For blacks
who had already spent signicant time in the New World, there were also
motives to defend ones home, family, and even paternalistic whites. During
the American Civil War, after nearly a century of antislavery agitation, the
former slave Frederick Douglass expressed alarm about reports that the Confederacy might begin to arm slaves with the promise of freedom. Douglass,
who had written about his own experience of being broken in body, soul, and
spiritof being transformed into a brutewas convinced in January
1865 that a signicant number of southern slaves would ght to defend the
South, and thus slavery, if they could be assured their own liberty: Into which
scale the black man goes there goes victory. I am not at all of the opinion of
some of the Anti-Slavery press that the slaves of the South will not ght in the
interests of the South. I am inclined to think that such is the power of the slavemasters over their slaves, such is the condence they can inspire, that if Jeff.
Davis earnestly goes about the work to raise a black army in the South, making them suitable promises they can be made very effective in a war for Southern independence. Fortunately, as Joseph P. Reidy explains in a chapter that
I discuss below, the Confederate government disagreed with this conclusion
until it was far too late.
I know that a Whiggish or teleological historian might well see the American Revolution and especially the French Revolution as the beginning of an
inevitable chain of events leading to the abolition of slavery in the Western
Hemisphere. Certainly these revolutions led to the beginnings of antislavery

10

David Brion Davis

movements. And without these movements, converging much later with unpredictable events such as the Latin American wars of independence, British
parliamentary reform, and the revolutions of 1848, the eradication of New
World slavery would have been impossible. But even recognizing the supreme
importance of the French slaves self-emancipation in Haiti, to say nothing of
the French emancipation decree of 1794, which in effect was negated in 1802
by Napoleon, what impresses me the most about the period from 1775 to
1865 is the remarkable strength and durability of the New Worlds plantation
systems. Today we nd it almost impossible to understand how an average of
1.5 or two white males could successfully manage a plantation, often quite
isolated, with fty or one hundred or more slave laborers. It is no less difcult
to imagine how the highly productive and protable slave systems managed to
survive the disruption of major wars. Moreover, in the American South, where
slaves commonly supplemented their diets by hunting and shing, gun ownership was sometimes fairly common despite laws to the contrary.
As Frederick Douglass suggested, the climax of our story, even for the late
nineteenth-century Cuba described by Ada Ferrer, came with the great debate
in the American Civil War, rst in the North and nally in the South, about
freeing and enlisting blacks as combat troops. One new and often overlooked
aspect of the question was the immense monetary value of young male slaves.
In the West Indies and elsewhere owners had commonly been reimbursed for
slaves who were killed, badly wounded, captured, or lost in some other way.
But by 1860 a strong young eld hand could sell in New Orleans for $1,800,
or at least $50,000 in todays currency. And southerners continued to pay even
more as slave prices increased during the rst part of the war. The Confederacy would have had a difcult time, to say the least, in paying the price
for any signicant compensated emancipation.
For the Union, captured or fugitive slaves were rst termed contraband
and compensation, except for border state slaveholders, was soon out of the
question. Despite Lincolns early reluctance to enlist blacks or former slaves,
by the spring of 1863, after years of prodding from more radical army ofcers
and politicians, he was urging the massive enlistment of black troops and
told Andrew Johnson, the war governor of Tennessee, that the bare sight of
50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would
end the rebellion at once. As things turned out, the Union enlisted about two
hundred thousand black troops and sailors, most of them freed slaves, and the
Union army became in effect an army of liberation.
As Reidy indicates, the Confederacy relied on slaves from the outset as
unskilled eld hands and laborers, growing foodstuffs, transporting military
goods, and otherwise working to support soldiers in the eld and civilians on

Introduction

11

the home front. But despite early calls for the enlistment of slaves in the
Confederate army, a century of increasing racism combined with fear of abolitionist ideology apparently had repressed memories of the successful arming
of black slaves in the colonial era and in the British Caribbean. Antislavery and
proslavery ideologies had transformed the meaning of arming slaves by the
time of Americas Civil War, the outcome of which would surely inuence the
destiny of slavery in Cuba and Brazil. It was not until early in 1865 that
Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin succeeded in persuading President Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to poll Confederate soldiers on the issue of
arming and freeing slave soldiers. By that time the Confederacy had suffered a
series of decisive defeats and faced a critical shortage of manpower. But while
most army units favored the radical step, political opposition remained intense. It was only in March 1865 that the Confederate Congress passed legislation freeing some slaves to ght for Confederate independence. Hence before
the government evacuated Richmond, one company of blacks had been recruited to train for war and soon a few hundred freed slaves wore Confederate
uniforms.
Given the evidence that Reidy and other historians have presented, it would
appear that the Union forces could not have won the Civil War without the
support of a signicant number of African American soldiers and sailors.
Reidy goes on to observe that when most of these black veterans returned to
their southern home states, they took pride in having helped destroy slavery
and save the Union. They formed the backbone of the Republican party and
gave indispensable support to black male suffrage and the other measures
during Reconstruction. But like so much that is related to slavery and the Civil
War, this crucial contribution to the new, revolutionized United States, dedicated, in Lincolns words, to the proposition that all men are created equal,
was seldom honored and was soon repressed from white Americans collective
memory. And if the Confederacy, like innumerable governments from ancient
Greece to Napoleonic Britain, had taken the risk of freeing and arming large
numbers of slavesas early, say, as the spring of 1862the slavocracy might
well have won its independence, with an outcome that is almost impossible to
predict. The possibility that black veterans would then have overthrown their
masters is somewhat lessened when we look at the fate of the enormous number of black veterans after World War I.

Notes
1. Quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 835.

12

David Brion Davis

2. Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North
America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 6667. Although it was customary throughout history to offer enlisted slaves the reward of freedom, Berlin notes
that in the Carolinas only a handful of slaves won their freedom through military
service, and the English never formally incorporated black men into a regularly constituted militia as did the Spanish. In other regions slaves were often freed before they
took up arms, but the Muslim mamluks
had been enslaved in order to serve as soldiers
and were very rarely emancipated. This is a major difference between Christian and
Muslim societies. See also Keith R. Bradley, The Roman Slave Wars, 14070 b.c.: A
Comparative Perspective, in Forms of Control and Subordination in Antiquity, ed. Toru
Yuge and Masaoki Doi (Leiden: Brill, 1988), pp. 369376.
3. I explore aspects of this theme in From Homicide to Slavery: Studies in American
Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), and in my introduction to A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. ixxvii. With regard to primitive combat and enslavement, see the biblical story of David and Goliath: I Samuel 17:151. As the armies of
Israelites and Philistines face each other, the towering and gigantic Goliath shouts out:
Choose one of your men and let him come down against me. If he bests me in combat
and kills me, we will become your slaves; but if I best him and kill him, you shall be our
slaves and serve us.
4. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 297302, emphasis in original.
5. Note that the rst serious philosophical attack on the very principle of slavery
came from the late sixteenth-century defender of authoritarianism Jean Bodin, who held
that the rights and powers of a slaveholder undermined the absolute sovereignty of a
monarch.
6. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1982), passim.
7. Debra G. Blumenthal, Implements of Labor, Instruments of Honor: Muslim,
Eastern and Black African Slaves in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Ph.D. diss., University
of Toronto, 2000), pp. 216221.
8. In a few smaller states, such as Vermont and Massachusetts, and in Central America, emancipation was almost immediate. By the time of its independence, Mexico had
relatively few slaves, and it freed them in 1829.
9. Few if any historians have noted that Alexander Hamilton not only favored the
arming of slaves during the War of Independence, in conformity with the well-known
plan that John Laurens tried without success to sell to South Carolinas governor and
legislature, despite its approval by the Continental Congress. Hamilton also saw the
enlistment and arming of thousands of South Carolinas slaves as an entering wedge for
total emancipation, if only the barrier of racial prejudice could be overcome: I foresee
that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest.
The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many
things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part
with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the
impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrice. But it

Introduction

13

should be considered, that if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably
will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out will be to offer
them ourselves. An essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their
muskets. This will secure their delity, animate their courage, and I believe will have a
good inuence upon those who remain, by opening a door to their emancipation. This
circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish the success of the
project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favor of this
unfortunate class of men (Alexander Hamilton to John Jay, March 14, 1779, in The
Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, 24 vols. [New York: Columbia
University Press, 19611987], 2:1718). I am indebted to Philip Ziesche, a Yale University graduate student, for this information.
10. Although there is some evidence that the enlistment of black soldiers lessened
racism in Latin America, and we have much evidence that racial integration has succeeded in Americas present military forces, I myself witnessed the most extreme racism
and bloody racial conict in the segregated American army of 19451946. See my essay
The Americanized Mannheim of 19451946 in American Places: Encounters with
History; A Celebration of Sheldon Meyer, ed. William E. Leuchtenburg (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 7991.
11. Douglass, Black Freedom Is the Prerequisite of Victory: An Address Delivered in
New York, New York, on January 13, 1865, in The Frederick Douglass Papers, ser. 1,
Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vol. 4, 186480, ed. John W. Blassingame and John
R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 5556. Douglass continued: If Jeff. Davis will hold out to the blacks of the South their freedom, guarantee
their freedom, the possession of a piece of land, and the elective franchise, I should say
that the negroes of the South would be acting unwisely if they do not ght, and ght
valiantly, for this boon, if on the other hand, the North is unwilling to concede those
rights and guaranties.

Arming Slaves and Helots in Classical Greece

peter hunt

The independent Greek city-states of the classical period, 500338 bc,

fought many wars against each other, individually or in various combinations.
Many of the most important city-states were also slave societies: their numerous slaves were crucial to their agriculture and to their urban economies.
In response to this pair of circumstances, cities sometimes encouraged their
opponents slaves to desert. They also mobilized their own slaves in a variety
of ways ranging from emergency infantry service with the promise of freedom
to regular mobilization with pay in the navy.
Warfare between the independent city-states of Greece in the archaic period,
750500 bc, was limited and convention-bound. This type of warfare is
sometimes called agonal because it resembled a contest with set rules, an agon:
a single battle resulted in a clear winner and decided the war. The heavy
infantry, the hoplites, who determined the battles outcome, provided their
own metal armor and thus came from the richer part of the population. This
warfare regime left little scope for arming slaves, because only a fraction
of the free population was armed, and inviting the desertion of an enemys
slaves would result only in retribution and contribute little to the single battle
that counted.
In the classical period, some wars became more intense and lasted longer.

14

Arming Slaves and Helots

15

They were decided not by single battles but sometimes by lengthy campaigns.
Wars were no longer fought over disputed borderlands, but more often a
states independence and even its system of government were at stake. On
occasion, a citys very existence could be at risk: the adult men could be killed
and their women and children sold into slavery. Athens, the most populous
city in the Greek world, came close to such a fate at the end of the Peloponnesian War, a particularly bitter conict. Naval warfare, whose importance grew
with the increasing importance of trade, demanded material and nancial
resources, centralized planning, and manpower well beyond those required by
hoplite warfare. In the context of more intense wars, often involving large
navies, states used every available source of manpower including their slaves.
As attacks on an enemys economy became more common, states were often
tempted to try to get the slaves of their opponents to rebel or, more often,
simply to desert.
Ancient Greek city-states typically possessed signicant populations of
chattel slaves. The commercial and prosperous islands of Chios and Corcyra
seem to have had particularly numerous slaves, but agrarian Elis and Thebes
had many also. Plausible estimates of the number of slaves in classical Athens
range from forty thousand to more than one hundred thousand at the time of
the Peloponnesian War. Since the population of Athenian adult male citizens
was between thirty thousand and sixty thousand at this time, the military
potential of slave manpower was obvious.
Greek agriculture was mixed, intensive, and dominated by mid-sized farms
with a few slaves on each. Slaves were even more prominent in urban crafts,
commerce, and mining. The greatest concentrations of slaves were employed
in these sectors: one hundred slaves working in a shield workshop or a thousand owned by a single man and rented out to work in the silver mines of
southern Attica, which may have employed more than twenty thousand slaves
at their height. But, perhaps more typically, craftsmen worked together with a
single slave or a handful of slaves. Overall, slave ownership was more widely
distributed among the free than in New World slavery: at the height of Athenian wealth, fully a third of the male citizens probably owned at least one
slave; very few owned large numbers of slaves, that is, more than thirty. The
politics of arming slaves was inuenced by this pattern of ownership within
different classes. Although the common people held sway in Athens direct
democracy, widespread slaveholding meant that only in extreme emergencies
would the emancipation of slaves for military service be contemplatedand
even then it was controversial. As we shall see below, the regular use of slaves
in the navy did not usually infringe on the interests of slave owners.

16

Peter Hunt

The Evidence and Its Difculties

Our sources of information about the role of slaves in ancient Greek
warfare are pitiful. Two examples show the grand scale of Greek slave recruitment and our paltry evidence for the practice. Aegospotami, the last and
decisive battle of the Peloponnesian War, 431404 bc, was fought between
the navies of the Spartan-led Peloponnesian league and of the Athenian Empire. These navies together were manned by more than sixty thousand men
including slave rowers. We have to guess, however, at the proportion of slaves
in their crews and with little rm ground on which to base our speculation: at
most we possess six scraps of evidence relevant to the proportion of slave
rowers. Each must be squeezed to produce a possible estimate for the proportion of slaves in a particular navy. And this information is for all of Greece
during the entire classical period. None of this evidence pertains specically to
the battle of Aegospotami. So the number of slaves at this battle may have
been anywhere from ten thousand to forty-ve thousand. We know that slaves
took part in this decisive battle on a large scale, but theories about their origins, means of recruitment, and fate depend on arguments from probability
and sometime tenuous onesrather than on hard evidence.
The second example concerns slave desertion, again in the Peloponnesian
War. Thucydides mentions briey that more than twenty thousand slaves,
most of them skilled workers, ran away from their Athenian masters and
escaped to a fort established by the Spartans in Athenian territory at Decelea.
Whether these slaves escaped to freedom or to reenslavement under different
masters or ended up as rowers in the Peloponnesian Navy is unknown. Nor
does Thucydides explicitly say that the Spartans promised freedom to the
slaves, although this is most likely what motivated them to desert in such large
numbers.
In part, the lack of detailed information is a problem common to all ancient
history: our sources are scarce and difcult to interpret even when compared
to the high Middle Ages and are far inferior to the evidence for any modern period. Crucial events, matters of common knowledge and great interest
throughout Greece, are insecurely known. For example, the mid-fth-century
treaty that formally ended the great Persian Wars, the Peace of Kallias, is so
insecurely attested that many scholars doubt its very existence.
When, however, we consider the Peloponnesian War, we might expect our
information to be much better, since we possess the long and meticulous
account of Thucydides and its admittedly less competent continuation by
Xenophon. But another difculty now presents itself. Greek historians as-

Arming Slaves and Helots

17

sumed informed Greek readers. They did not always detail standard practices
that their readers understood already. Rather, they focused on the course of
events, on its explanation, or on exceptional practices. Certain uses of slaves in
war may have been taken for granted and therefore neglected.
This explanation for ancient reticence is still not quite sufcient: Thucydides
would never have let the fate of twenty thousand Athenian citizens go unstated
as he does the fates of the slaves who ed to Decelea. A systematic neglect of
slaves mars our sources. To begin with, slaves were less important than citizens
and thus less worthy of report. But even this explanation is too neutral; slave
soldiers were not merely unimportant but a particularly awkward topic for
two main reasons. First, classical Greece emphasized more than most other
societies the importance of military service in judging a man and specically
his claims for political rights. Second, in common with a variety of slave
societies, free Greeks affected to despise their slaves for a variety of faults,
several of them incompatible with the virtues of a brave soldier.
From the time that the Iliad was written down, around 700 bc, a strong
stream in Greek thinking put a high value on ghting for ones city and linked
it with social status. Homers aristocrats encourage each other to ght as
follows:
Therefore it is our duty in the forefront of the Lykians
to take our stand, and bear our part of the blazing battle,
so that a man of the close-armoured Lykians may say of us:
Indeed, these are no ignoble men who are lords of Lykia,
these kings of ours, who feed upon the fat sheep appointed
and drink the exquisite sweet wine, since indeed there is strength
of valour in them, since they ght in the forefront of the Lykians.

When hoplites came to dominate warfare in the course of the seventh century
bc, military service became associated with the citizenship of the independent farmers who made up the hoplites, rather than the aristocrats of Homer. Even in classical Athens, a man could lose his rights as a citizen for
cowardice in battle. Not only political rights but also basic worth depended
on ones ghting ability and courage: Tyrtaeus archaic paean to the absolute
primacy of the virtues of a good hoplite was still well-known in the fourth
century:
I would not say anything for a man nor take account of him
for any speed of his feet or wrestling skill he might have . . .
not if he were more handsome and gracefully formed than Tithnos,
or had more riches than Midas had, or Knyras too,

18

Peter Hunt
not if he were more of a king than Tantalid Pelops,
or had the power of speech and persuasion Adrastos had,
not if he had all splendors except for a ghting spirit . . .
Here is courage, mankinds nest possession, here is
the noblest prize that a young man can endeavor to win.

Tyrtaeus species that it is ghting at close quarters in the infantry that reveals
the worthy man. Classical Athens, however, depended more on its navy than
its hoplites. But despite some aristocratic contempt for the naval mob, the
connection between military service and rights remained strong. A fthcentury critic of Athenian democracy had to admit that the common people
deserve their power because it is the ordinary people who man the eet and
bring the city her power. Although Tyrtaeus poem manifestly oversimplies the actual complexity of social status in Greece, the military virtues played
an unusually large role in the Greek spectrum of values. Accordingly, the
question of arming slaves was always a political and ideological one as well as
a practical one.
All sorts of military service, therefore, even rowing for the navy, were associated with rights that slaves manifestly did not have and, to Greek thinking,
should not have. Slaves were sometimes Greek prisoners of war, but more
often they came to Greece via trade from areas in the northern Aegean, around
the Black Sea, and the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria. The circumstances of
their original enslavement are largely unknown. Slaves were seen as inferior,
having been defeated in war or coming from barbarian peoples. They were
seen as childish and cowardly and as the polar opposites of the citizens. None
of these ways of viewing slaves could easily be reconciled with their playing an
important role in warfare, an activity so central to the self-denition of the
male citizen.
The juxtaposition of this seemingly overwhelming ideology and the barely
mentioned participation of slaves in warfare have resulted in two very different historical approaches. Some scholars have played down the evidence for
slave participation, since such a practice was incompatible with Greek thinking. They tend to argue that a handful of exceptional cases constitute the
whole of slave use in classical Greek warfare. I have recently argued for the
opposite approach. Rival cities at war often had no choice but to press every
advantage including the recruitment of slavesand inciting desertion among
their enemies. Contemporary Greek historians were not similarly constrained
in what they chose to report or focus on. They could neglect slave participation or focus on other issues. So, far from looking askance at brief references
to arming slaves on the grounds that such a practice was incompatible with

Arming Slaves and Helots

19

Greek thinking about slaves and military service, we should take full account
of this evidence. Indeed, other cases have very probably been completely lost
from the record.

Types of Slave Use

Rather than go through the scattered individual cases of arming of slaves
in the many wars of classical Greece, it is perhaps more useful rst to sketch
out typical practices in broad strokes. It is readily admitted that such a general
picture, faute de mieux, is not as solid as one built up by the consideration of
many detailed narratives. We have a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and are
trying to put them together, knowing full well that they may belong to different puzzles and simply hoping that the puzzles resemble each other, that is,
that a Peloponnesian navy of 405 will resemble one of 411. This general
overview focuses on three cases: slaves from Scythia, archers, who performed
police functions within Athens; slaves who accompanied hoplites on campaigns but were not armed; and slaves who were occasionally armed as infantry soldiers. Then I consider in greater detail two cases that were of great
military importance and about which the evidence allows more insight into
the practical problems, politics, and effects of arming slaves: the military roles
of Spartas serike Helot population and the use of slaves in the Athenian navy
during the Peloponnesian War.
Athens did not have a police force; its legal system depended a great deal
on self-help and social pressure. In order to maintain order in the courts
and assemblies and to assist certain magistrates, Athens, in the fth century,
bought a force of three hundred Scythian slaves, armed with the traditional
Scythian bow. These slaves carried these lethal weapons among an unarmed
populace, but they seemed to have performed their jobs smoothly and did not
evoke fears of a slave revolt. Despite being the butt of various xenophobic
jokes in comedies, the archers were a favored group of slaves. Because of their
homogeneity and their weapons, their lives were perhaps more like those of
mercenariesor of Muslim slave soldiersthan of individual chattel slaves.
These archers may have provided a bulwark for the democracy against the
possibility of coups by the oligarchs, which often depended on a surprise attack
in concert with mercenaries. The Scythian archers also strengthened the states
power while maintaining equal rights among the citizens: such equality was
felt to be offended if a citizen, even in the role of policeman, laid hands upon
another. The Scythian archers were armed slaves, but they were armed for
internal rather than external purposes.
Each hoplite, often an independent farmer, typically brought one of his

20

Peter Hunt

slaves with him on a campaign. Such attendants played a key support role in
warfare. In particular, they helped carry the hoplites armor, which weighed
up to sixty pounds and was uncomfortable in the summer heat, and thus not
put on until the last possible moment. The attendants might also help plunder
or ravage the enemys countryside, throw stones at the enemy, and carry and
care for the wounded. They seem not to have played a large role in battle itself
and did not present the threats, both practical and ideological, that slaves in
combat did. Although such slaves might take the opportunity to desert, they
might also render their masters exceptional service and receive commensurate
rewards, such as their freedom, or at least public commemoration if they
died. More commonly they did hard but inglorious work on a campaign and
returned to their previous duties afterwards.
On occasion, slaves were armed as infantry soldiers. A variety of factors
limited the usefulness of this policy. Although chattel slave revolts were almost unheard-of in the classical Greek world, the Greeks often viewed their
slaves as intrinsically hostile to the free: Xenophon argues that the free citizens
provide a bodyguard for each other so that they are not murdered by their
slaves. Therefore, slaves who fought in the infantry were typically either
promised or given their freedom to assure their loyalty. Rarely were they made
citizens, a closely guarded prerogative; rather, they became metics, resident
aliens, liable for military service and subject to a special tax but also free to
leave the city. Thus, the policy of freeing slaves to ght was expensive, unrepeatable, and usually reserved for emergencies. For example, after Philip of
Macedon defeated the Athenians and their allies at the battle of Chaeronia,
338 bc, the Athenians voted, among other emergency measures, to free and
arm their slaves, presumably to man the extensive walls of Athens and its port,
the Piraeus. When they discovered that Philip was willing to offer them peace
terms instead of attempting to storm the city, they rescinded their offers and
decided to make peace instead. Hyperides, who proposed the motion to arm
the slaves, was put on trial. He defended himself on grounds of necessity
alone: It was not I who wrote the decree; the battle of Chaeronia did.
Earlier, during the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian general armed the crews
of his navy as javelin throwers, a type of light infantry. These crews included
slave rowers, but, as we shall see, such slaves probably enjoyed an aboveaverage status and incentives for good behavior, including the hope of eventual manumission. So they could be used as infantry almost as easily as they
could serve as rowers.
In neither of these cases did slaves serve as hoplites, the heavy infantry who
dominated Greek battles. An ideological factor made the arming of slaves
as hoplites particularly unpalatable: all military service gave some claims to

Arming Slaves and Helots

21

those who performed it, but the hoplite was the soldier most closely associated
with citizenship. Thus, the hoplites remained primarily citizen amateurs in the
fourth century, when the use of mercenaries had become common for other
types of soldiers. The hoplites formed the branch of the armed forces from
which slaves ought especially to have been excluded.
In addition, the hoplites only came from the richer half or third of the male
citizens, and class imperatives often inuenced the decision of whom to arm. If
a city had extra hoplite weapons and armor on hand, it could, if it wished, arm
its poorer citizens. In some cases, class tension among the citizens made this
option unappealingon one occasion the poor overruled an oligarchic government as soon as they were given hoplite weapons. The Athenians reportedly armed three hundred slaves, probably as hoplites, to ght at the battle of
Marathon against the Persians, 490 bc. They did so although they had
thousands of poorer citizens, the thetes, available. Presumably, the rich and
middling farmers, the hoplites, wanted to maintain their monopoly of the
prestige of defending the city. They were willing not only to risk their lives to
justify their prerogativesas they had for centuriesbut also to give the
available extra armor to their slaves rather than to the thetes, who were perhaps considered more of a threat to their dominance. The promise of freedom
for the slaves could be considered another act of laudable public spirit on the
part of the slave owners, since they were making a nancial sacrice for the
communitys benet.

Spartas Rebellious Helots

For deeper insight into the practical problems, politics, and effects of
arming slaves, the military roles of Spartas serike Helot population deserve
special mention. Spartans maintained their status as leisured professional soldiers by means of their exploitation of a large population of unfree peasants
called Helots. The origins of Helotry in the Spartan homeland, Laconia, is
obscure, but many of the Helots inhabited the territory of Messenia, conquered by Sparta in the early archaic period. These owed to the Spartans a
proportion, probably half, of their produce. They might have been required to
perform personal service as well, for example, as hoplites attendants. The
Spartans called them their slaves, and they are so described even in treaties. This designation was an attempt to assimilate Spartas controversial
subjection of an entire Greek people to the accepted system of slavery, which
usually involved non-Greek individuals. The Helots were not, however, chattel slaves. They could not be bought or sold individually. Many lived within
their own villages and with their own families.

22

Peter Hunt

The Helots, especially those of Messenia, were notorious for their rebelliousness. Messenia had attempted and failed to free itself in a bitter war in the
seventh century. Messenian exiles, attested in the mid-sixth century, suggest
further disturbances. Another revolt is likely to have occurred in 490. Sparta
required the aid of allies throughout Greeceand may have taken yearsto
put down a large Helot insurrection in the mid-fth century. Indeed, Spartan
treaties sometimes specied that Spartas allies must come to its aid in case the
slaves rose in rebellion. In addition to these particular incidents, an atmosphere of suspicion and brutality between Spartans and Helots is well attested.
The constant military training and totalitarianism of the Spartans were aimed
as much at the danger within as at any external Greek enemy.
These two threats combined when Spartas enemies tried to take advantage
of Helot discontent. Athens gave Naupactus, a city it had conquered and later
used as a naval base, to the Messenian refugees who had left the Peloponnese
on a safe-conduct at the end of the mid-fth-century revolt. These Messenians
became particularly brave and loyal allies of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War and afterwards. It was probably at their suggestion that in 425
Athens built a fort at Pylos, on the Messenian coast, in order to attract deserters and incite Helot rebellions. This fort was later manned by the Messenians from Naupactus, who were particularly effective at inciting their countrymen to rebel.
By climbing apparently insurmountable cliffs and appearing unexpectedly
at the Spartans rear, they also played a key role in forcing the surrender of
several hundred Spartans trapped on the island of Sphacteria. These Messenians even dedicated a beautiful victory statue, now known as the Nike of
Paeonius, at Olympia taken from the spoils of their enemies. Although
the Spartans were not named as the defeated enemies, the presence of a dedication by the Messeniansthe very name was unpalatable for Sparta and its
sympathizersat the Panhellenic center of Olympia was, no doubt, hard for
the Spartans to swallow.
Late in the war, the Spartans besieged Pylos and recaptured it after letting the
garrison of Messenians from Naupactus and Helot deserters leave under a safe
conduct. The Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War allowed the Spartans
to captured Naupactus. A generation later, however, Thebes, after defeating
the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 bc, invaded Messenia and helped the Messenians
build a walled city there. After three centuries of large and small rebellions, the
Messenians gained their freedom with the intervention of Thebes. Sparta continued to possess Helots in its home territory, but it never again subjected
Messenia nor played a major role among the important Greek city-states.
The sudden conversion of the majority of Spartas slaves into a Greek

Arming Slaves and Helots

23

city-state sparked considerable controversy. Most interesting for our purposes

are the two types of arguments employed by pro-Messenian propagandists.
The more radical and ultimately less inuential approach accepted that the
Messenians had been slaves and so denounced slavery: it was in a work about
Messenia that Alcidamas, a sophist and rhetorician, arguedin one of the
very few criticisms of slavery to survive from ancient Greecethat god made
all men free; nature has made nobody a slave. The other approach had
begun well before Messenia had been freed. This was to separate the subjection of Messenia from usual chattel slavery: the Messenians were not like
slaves at all but were Greeks with their own mythical history going back to
Nestor in the Iliad. This approach ended up prevailing because it reconciled
the liberation of Messenia with its eventual position as a regular Greek citystate, led by slaveholders, which had been freed by another city, Thebes, led
by slaveholders. Thus the epitaph of the great Theban general Epaminondas
stated, By my plans Sparta was deprived of its glory / And holy Messene
received back its children at last /. . . / All Greece was independent and free.
Although all Greece was free, the epitaph did not imply that any slaves had
been freed or needed to be freed but rather that the Messenians had been
restored to their rightful position.

Helot Soldiers
Among the Athenian forces, whose expedition against Syracuse ended in
disaster in 413, Thucydides lists a contingent of Messenians from Naupactus
and Pylos. The Spartan general Gylippus, whose arrival in the nick of time
kept Syracuse from surrender, came with one thousand men from the Peloponnese and a unit of six hundred men picked from among the Helots and the
Neodamodeis, the latter being Helots freed for military service. In a pattern
that will become less surprising as the reader continues through this book,
Helots were used extensively in Spartan land armies despite their well-earned
reputation for discontent and rebelliousness.
Sometimes Helots were used in large numbers for short campaigns. At the
battle of Plataea, Herodotus reports, Helot soldiers outnumbered the Spartans by seven to one: there were thirty-ve thousand Helots to ve thousand Spartans. I have argued elsewhere that at Plataea the Spartans, professional soldiers with a fearsome reputation, fought in the front rank while the
Helots made up the rear seven ranks of a typical Greek phalanx. Traditional
scholarship, on the other hand, assigns the Helots a less important role as
lightly armed troops on the periphery of the battle. In later campaigns in
the Peloponnese, the Helots were again mobilized en masse, along with the

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Peter Hunt

Spartans. It is not clear whether these Helots served in the same formation as
the Spartan hoplites, although at other points we denitely hear of Helot hoplites. Again our information about these mobilizations is scanty, deriving in
each case from a few words in Thucydides. Such mobilization was probably an
unrewarded obligation, although occasionally Helots gained or hoped for
rewards for particularly meritorious service.
In a different pattern of mobilization, the Spartans recruited smaller numbers of Helots as professional hoplites for distant and lengthy campaigns.
These Helot soldiers were typically rewarded, either before or after their service, with freedom from the obligations of Helotry. They served in separate
units in armies consisting typically of a few Spartan leaders, mercenaries, and
allies. At the peak of Spartan imperial power, in the early fourth century, the
Spartans had at least as many armed Helots in service at a time, probably three
thousand, as they had full citizens in total. These Helot soldiers allowed
Sparta to ght the long and distant campaigns it was unwilling to undertake
otherwise.
Ironically, the Spartans were unwilling to leave the Peloponnese in force
because of their fear of Helot rebellions. By promising freedom to some Helots
and having them ght distant campaigns for them, the Spartans selected and
co-optedor at least removedsome of the most martial Helots. The Spartans were also able to stay near home and supervise the rest more closely. The
loyalty of Helot soldiers is impugned in a couple of the sources, but neither
rebellions nor large-scale desertions seem to have occurred during the ve
decades when they were a pillar of Spartas military presence abroad. Sparta
may have nally gone too far when it promised freedom to several thousand
Helots to help ght against the Theban-led army that was to liberate Messenia; many of these Helot soldiers deserted to the enemy.
The organization of Helot society, with its families, local communities, and
traditions, made the Helots a greater threat than the chattel slaves of other
Greek states. Indeed, other cities were advised not to import too many slaves
from one place. The factors that made Helots safer to arm than chattel slaves
were also no doubt complex. Two deserve mention. First, the state, as a representative of the community of Spartans with full citizenship, was very powerful in comparison to the individual. Therefore, individual Spartans had less
power or will to oppose the mobilization of Helots from their estates. Second,
the home ties that Helot soldiers possessed could also serve as pledges of their
good behavior. Thus their rebelliousness and their military service for Sparta
were not irreconcilable poles of Helot behavior but were linked by their special position as subjected but not quite enslaved Greeks.

Arming Slaves and Helots

25

Slaves in the Athenian Navy

Slaves were much more commonly used in the navy than as foot soldiers.
Naval warfare required far larger numbers of people than land warfare. Athens never managed to eld more than sixteen thousand hoplites at any one
time, but its largest naval effort required fty thousand crew members. So
whereas hoplite service was not imposed on the poorer half of the citizen
population, mobilizing a navy required large numbers of poor citizens, resident aliens, foreign mercenaries, and slaves. The vast majority of these men
were rowers: one hundred and seventy of a triremes crew of two hundred
pulled at the oars. The experience, strength, skill, and morale of these rowers
were central to a ships success. Rowing in a trireme required at least as much
skill as did ghting as a hoplite: each person manned his own oar, and precise
coordination among rowers was crucial. Classical sea battles depended on
maneuvering and ramming rather than on boarding enemy ships or on missiles
launched from the decks. The pride of the unmatched Athenian navy was its
skill at the maneuvers that set up ramming opportunities: the periplous (the
sailing-around) and the diekplous (the sailing-through-and-then-out). In contrast, navies that depended on the ghting men on their decks could be considered old-fashioned, if not incompetent. The ship itself with its metal ram was
the main weapon of naval warfare, and it was the rowers who wielded it.
Rowers did not individually possess weapons, and thus slave rowers did not
present the threat or require the rewards that slave infantry usually did. But
rowers more than anybody else were the ghters in naval battlesand were
acknowledged as such in contemporary sources.
Although this naval role was their most important role, evidence for the
practice is brief and scattered. For example, of one thousand prisoners captured from the navy of Corcyra at the battle of Sybota in 433 bc, eight hundred were slaves. Later, the Athenian general Phormio brought back to Athens the free men out of the captives from the naval battles against a mainly
Corinthian navy. Among the half-dozen other pieces of evidence for slave
rowers, one stands out: in a large allied navy under Spartan leadership in 411,
the Syracusan and Thurian crews demanded their back pay most vociferously,
because they were mostly free men. This statement implies two things: the
Syracusan and Thurian crews contained slaves and, more startling, the crews
of the other ships contained more slaves than free sailors.
The Athenian navy, about which the most is known, was no exception to the
practice of using slaves as rowers. The two ofcial state ships are described as
having only free citizens in their crews, marking them out as exceptions.

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Peter Hunt

Our only Athenian crew roster, although fragmentary, records the names and
status of a squadrons crew members. Between 20 and 40 percent of the
rowers on the different ships were slaves. Rather than being a record of the
exceptional use of slaves, as some scholars have argued, this inscription conrms that Athenian ships, like those of every other Greek navy, had a signicant proportion of slaves among their rowers. Nevertheless, the Athenian
ships were not slave galleys. The majority of the crew was made up of free
Athenian citizens or foreigners, mainly from the subject cities of the Athenian
Empire. The slaves were not chained to their benches nor driven by the whip.
How did a promiscuous group of slaves, citizens, and foreigners end up
providing the crews for the Athenian navy? Two patterns emerge: rst, a
proportion of slaves served regularly in the typically dominant Athenian navy;
second, in the desperate circumstances of the Arginusae campaign, late in
the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians needed to mobilize their slaves en masse
for a relief force. In order to accomplish this they promised them freedom
and eventually gave them citizenship, a far more disruptive and controversial
practice.
To muster a large navy was an ambitious undertaking for the rather rudimentary classical state, most of whose ofcials were chosen annually by lot.
The ships were manned using a complex process that was anything but uniform. The ofcers, archers, and hoplite marines were provided by the state.
The captain of a trireme, the trierarch, was chosen not for his nautical skill but
for his wealth: he was nancially responsible for the ship. The state provided a
hull, necessary equipment, and the base salary for the crew, but the incidental expenses and nal responsibility for outtting and manning a ship
were the trierarchs. In some cases, trierarchs recruited volunteers and paid
bonuses to attract skillful rowers. In other cases, the state drafted citizen
rowers and assigned them to different ships. These draftees did not make up
the full complement of rowers, and one trierarch claimed in court that because many of them were of inferior quality, he was forced to hire good men in
their place.
Hence, the type of people who rowed in triremes was not a matter of state
policy. Rather, the use of slaves might be at the discretion of an ambitious
trierarch trying to put together a crew to do him creditthere were races at
the start of naval expeditions, and having the admiral choose to ride on a
particular trireme was a great honor. Or a thrifty trierarch might try to minimize his expenses but still ll the benches. In either case, the ofcers and
marines were usually citizens drawn from the richest one-third of the citizen
body and used to having slaves with them. The lone surviving crew roster
indicates that many of the slaves on board belonged to these citizens. So in

Arming Slaves and Helots

27

manning a trireme, a trierarch would hire as rowers some slaves of the ofcers
who had been assigned to him. There were also slaves who belonged to other
rowers, probably urban artisans or farmers put out of work by the war; both
of these classes often owned slaves.
Finally, there seem to have been some slaves without masters on board the
warships. Their supervision may have been informally assigned to a relative or
friend of their masterand the whole crew had a stake in a full and competent
complement for maximum speed in battle and cruising. Nevertheless, such
slaves were trusted in situations in which ight was relatively easy, since triremes, built for mobility and little else, pulled ashore every night and often did
so for lunch. Family ties might keep some of them loyal. Early in the war,
fugitive slaves might well be enslaved again if they appeared, speaking broken
or accented Greek, in another city-states countryside. When the Spartan alliance, with Persian nancing, started manning a large navy and needed crew
members of whatever provenance, and when desertion to this outt became
easier with the establishment of the Spartan fort at Decelea in Attica, masters were under more pressure to grant their slaves signicant incentives or
lose them.
As in many urban commercial slave systems, monetary incentives with the
possibility of eventual manumission were a crucial part of the control a master
could exert over his slaves. How might such a system work for slave rowers?
To begin with, they were paid at the same rate as the free. A fth-century passage, although difcult to interpret, suggests that, as in many such societies
compare the jornal system of Latin American slaverymasters allowed their
slaves to keep some of their wages and eventually buy their freedom: In a
state relying on naval power it is inevitable that slaves must work for hire so
that we may take prots from what they earn, and they must be allowed to
go free.
Although we have no evidence about the way a Greek slaves wage was split
between master and slave, we know or can estimate the usual pay for a rower,
the cost of subsistence, the length of the sailing season, and the replacement
cost of an average slave. A reasonable guessand it is no more than that
might also assume a master interested in prot but also in a motivated rather
than a desperate slave. In such a case, a slave rower who brought in no additional cash during the off-season might be allowed to keep one-sixth of his
gross salary. He could then afford his freedom after about seven years. His
master would pocket twice as much in prot each year and recoup the slaves
price when the slave paid for his freedom.
The closest parallel in Athens to the mixed crews of triremes appears in the
work records for the construction of the Erechtheum temple, which also took

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Peter Hunt

place during the late Peloponnesian War. There we nd slaves, foreigners,

and citizens in ratios similar to those on the crew list. The three different
classes again received equal pay for equal worksomething slave masters
probably insisted on. Although a few managerial jobs were reserved for citizens, slaves typically followed the trades of their masters.
The only distinction between skill and wages among rowers was that between the men in the highest row of oarsmen, the thranitai, and the men in the
other two rows. The thranitai, sitting on outriggers above the second row, had
the most difcult rowing job. Aristophanes singles the thranitai out for praise
as the saviors of the state while, in another play, he has fun at the expense of
the lowest row, who, he says, were farted upon. Thucydides mentions that
trierarchs paid bonuses to attract the best thranitai. If there were any distinction between slave and free among the rowers on a trireme, it might be
that the thranitai tended to be free while slaves were relegated to the lower
rows. In the absence of evidence either way, such a hierarchy among the
rowers cannot be ruled out. The demands of military efciency, however, can
also be compelling: one can easily imagine sloppy, weak, or ill free thranitai
being sent down in favor of t slaves. In any case, the numbers probably never
worked out exactly enough to allow a consistent distinction between slave and
free rowers.
This system did not always produce ideal crews. When the Athenians on the
Sicilian expedition captured the town of Hyccara, they enslaved the population. Some rowers bought these slavesslaves were typically cheap at the time
of captureand convinced their trierarchs to take them as substitutes for
themselves. Experienced rowers therefore left the foundering Athenian expedition against Syracuse. The ships were stuck with extremely unmotivated
slave rowers without individual masters responsible for them and with no
training or experience in naval warfare. Moreover, other slave rowers were
deserting. But the eets disintegration included problems not only with the
slaves but also with the Athenian allies who came on the campaign expecting
to make money rather than to ght and who were also deserting. As the
Athenians prospects in Sicily faded, anybody who could abandon them did
so. Until this point, the mixed crews of slaves, foreigners, and Athenians seem
to have functioned perfectly well.
This regular and usually uncontroversial use of slaves in the Athenian navy
seems worlds away from the tension and conict usually associated with arming slavesoften in the teeth of violent opposition from slave owners. Indeed,
Athenian practices did not disrupt the system of slavery but were integrated
into a pattern of incentives mainly intended for skilled urban slaves. The factors
that made this system work were several. There was plenty of rowingor

Arming Slaves and Helots

29

better-paid workto go around in imperial Athens. Citizens sometimes had to

be drafted for the navy and supplemented with foreigners as well as slaves.
Therefore, the free poor, whose clout in democratic Athens was considerable,
were not typically deprived of jobs by slave rowers. Seasonal naval service
allowed slave owners to keep their slaves more fully employed, and the wartime
interruption of agriculture meant that farmers, too, were happy to have paying
work for their slaves rather than being upset about losing needed labor.
From the slaves point of view, to be a rower was to earn a wage in a society
with no sanctions against manumission. The power of the Athenian navy was
also a signicant factor. For much of the classical period, and especially in
the rst seventeen years of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian navy rarely
faced a signicant challenge to its supremacy, so rowing in the navy may have
seemed a job like any other.

Arginusae and Its Aftermath

Near the end of the Peloponnesian War, different circumstances evoked
a categorically different pattern of recruitment, bitterly contested and disruptive of Athenian slavery. Athens, having already lost two large navies in Sicily
and with much of its empire in revolt, was challenged at sea by a Spartan-led
navy subsidized by the Persian king. In 407 the Spartans began to pay a higher
salary and thus to outbid the Athenians for foreign rowers, probably the most
numerous class of rowers in the Athenian navy. They probably also recruited
many of the more than twenty thousand slaves who had ed from Athens to
Decelea but no longer had a home to which they could easily return. Experienced slave rowers may also have deserted directly from the Athenian to the
Peloponnesian eet, where they would be free men and might hope to keep all
of their pay. So, in the spring of 406, the Athenian eet was able to man only
70 ships instead of the more than 100 in use the previous year; the Spartan eet
grew from 90 to 140 and then to 170. The Spartans chased and then blockaded the smaller Athenian eet at Mytilene. A single Athenian trireme managed to run the blockade and get the news to Athens.
At this point, Athens was no longer able to man a eet by its usual methods;
rather, they voted to go to the rescue with one hundred and ten ships, putting
aboard all who were of military age, both slave and free; and within thirty
days they manned the one hundred and ten ships and set forth. Even the
cavalry class went aboard in considerable numbers. Despite having only a
few weeks training, this eet won a major victory over the Peloponnesian eet
at the battle of Arginusae. They destroyed or captured almost two-thirds of
the enemy eet and relieved the blockade of their own navy.

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Peter Hunt

In order to accomplish this feat, the Athenians had to promise freedom to

their slave rowers. And, even more startling, they had to grant citizenship to
them. To be precise, they made the slaves Plataeans by giving them the same
citizenshipwithout the right to certain hereditary priesthoodswith which
they had honored their loyal Plataean allies when the latters city was destroyed by the Spartans. Otherwise citizenship was ideally a strictly guarded
prerogative requiring proof of Athenian descent on both sides. The Athenians,
however, had to take these dramatic and unusual measures to overcome two
major problems they faced in 406.
First, they needed to motivate a larger, different, and less tractable group of
slaves to train as rowers and then to ght. When the cavalry class embarked on
the ships, along came their numerous slaves. These belonged to larger households and often worked farms for masters who lived in the city. They generally
had had little personal contact with their masters. Even more alienated were
the slaves who worked in the appalling silver mines in southern Attica. These
mines seem nally to have stopped production at this point in the war; the
most likely cause was the recruitment en masse of their slave workers to
provide rowers for the Arginusae eet. Promising them freedom was the only
way to motivate these slaves. Some small portion of a rowers wagewhich
Athens paid less and less regularly as the war dragged onwould no longer do
the trick.
Second, the Athenians needed to keep their crews. Winning the battle could
not effect a lasting change in Athens prospects as long as its rowers were
deserting to the enemy for higher pay. The grant of citizenship in democratic
Athens probably made staying with the Athenian navy a much more attractive
option for the slaves. For slaves to return home would often be impossible
after a lengthy absenceone often originally due to poverty or a military or
political defeatand would almost never entail the rights and security that an
Athenian citizen possessed. The granting of freedom and citizenship solved
Athens manpower problems, if not its nancial ones, for the rescue campaign
and for the rest of the warwhich ended in 404 bc after a crushing defeat and
a horric siege.
Many patriotic Athenians may have seen the necessityand the fairness
of rewarding their slave rowers. The reaction of other slave owners, whose
valuable property had been converted into fellow citizens, was probably one
of outrage. Athens did not have many regular taxes and depended on special
wartime taxes on capital and on liturgies such as the trierarchy, which could be
extremely expensive. This wholesale liberation of Athenian slaves was nevertheless an extreme imposition.
In more modern cases, we often have copious evidence of planters outrage

Arming Slaves and Helots

31

at far less liberal policies than this. In the case of Athens, we are probably right
to assume similar attitudes on the part of, for example, men whose fortunes
were invested in mine slaves. Unfortunately, our only hard evidence consists
of an ambiguous couple of lines in a contemporary comedy, the Frogs by
Aristophanes. The parabasis of a comedy, in which the author spoke in his
own voice, sometimes contained serious advice. Aristophanes begins the
parabasis of Frogs by saying that it is shameful for men who have fought in
only one naval battle to be straightaway Plataeans and masters instead of
slaves. Thus, he expresses slaveholders dismay at the liberation and enfranchisement of the Arginusae slaves. Then, however, he retreats and claims that
he approves of this policy. His real goal, it turns out, was not to overturn a fait
accompli but rather to urge that the Athenians implicated in the oligarchic
coup of 411 have their full citizens rights restored. He points out that they
fought in many naval battles and not just one, as many of the freed slaves had.
He sums up with the argument that all who ght battles in the Athenian navy
should be citizens with full rights. Thus, he includes both the Arginusae slaves
and the suspected oligarchs in an argument based on a militaristic justication
of political status.
There is little evidence that the liberation and enfranchisement of the Arginusae slaves prompted a reevaluation of slavery. Athens was, no doubt, short
of slaves, especially males, by the end of the Peloponnesian War. Nevertheless,
the economic and political impetus behind the institution of slavery had not
changed, and in the fourth century Athens recovered and continued to be a
slave society; mining activity reached its peak during that time. A distinguished
scholar has suggested that Aristophanes Frogs may mark the introduction of a
new and much more active type of slave character into Athenian comedy and
that this may best be understood in the context of the rewards bestowed on the
Arginusae slaves the previous year. All in all, Greek thinking about slaves,
although it made the mobilization of slaves awkward, was exible enough to
tolerate granting citizenship to some slaves who had proved themselves worthy
men. Greek ethnocentrism was not as systematic as some modern forms of
racism, nor were the negative stereotypes of slaves absolute: some slaves could
simply be normal people who had suffered a terrible fate. Thus the triumph
of the Arginusae slaves was quickly forgotten or explained away.
Perhaps the most signicant change in attitude due to the use of slavesand
also mercenaries, often from areas considered half-barbarianin the military
was not a raising of their status but rather a demotion of the importance of
military virtues as the nal test of worth. Admittedly, this shift was a matter of
degree rather than a complete rejection of the congruity of social and military
status. But Plato, for example, in the mid-fourth century takes aim at the

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Peter Hunt

words of Tyrtaeus, discussed above. He points out that many people who are
good ghters are, in fact, stupid and brutish and that success in warfare cannot
be the criterion for the judgment of individuals or of states.
At rst glance, the enfranchisement of the Arginusae slaves may seem one of
the greatest benets that the war brought to chattel slaves. A garbled version of the battle is found in one of the scholia to Aristophanes: The slaves
went out and defeated the Lacedaimonians near Arginusae and recovered the
bodies of the slain. As a result they were freed and nobody was allowed to hit
slaves. It is hard to imagine an actual law forbidding masters to hit their
own slaves, but already in the early Peloponnesian War, the mere threat of
ight is supposed to have had a similar effect: Clouds begins with Strepsiades
complaining that because of the war he can no longer beat his slavesand
thus they are sleeping late.
The course of events, however, did not long favor the slaves of Arginusae.
The navy remained in commission, and so few of the slaves are likely to have
had a chance to be enrolled ofcially as citizens. In the following year, the
Athenian navy was almost completely destroyed by a surprise attack while
beached with its crews dispersed. Only nine of one hundred and eighty ships
escaped. The Athenian citizens who were captured, two thousand of them,
were massacred. Presumably, many of the Arginusae slaves did not choose to
assert their citizenship at this particular juncture, although the alternative was
likely reenslavement.
Indeed, there are only a few traces in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian
War of slaves who had been freed for military service, although the numbers of
slaves used on both sides must have surpassed ten thousand. When the
Sparta-backed oligarchy of the Thirty was ousted in 403, a proposal to grant
citizenship to the non-Athenians who had helped restore the democracy was
passed. The motion was blocked by a jury-court decision on the grounds that
the proposal was unconstitutional owing to a procedural irregularity. Contributing to this reversal was the consideration that many of those to be enfranchised were manifestly slaves. We also possess an odd speech against
a certain Pancleon, who returned to Athens after a lengthy absence in the
390s. Pancleon claimed to be a Plataeanwhich could mean that he was an
exile from Plataea or a slave of Plataean status like those of Arginusaebut
two people claimed him as their slave. Although we have no record of the
cases outcome, Pancleon may have depended too much on an emergency
decree from a lost war, underestimated his owners memories and power, and
possessed no proof that he had been a beneciary of Athens brief generosity.
Two former slaves turned up in the Ten Thousand, the army of Greek
mercenaries that fought for Cyrus in his abortive attempt to seize the throne of

Arming Slaves and Helots

33

Persia in 401 and then had to ght their way out of the center of the Persian
Empire. Xenophon, an Athenian mercenary who recounted the expedition,
mentions a certain Apollonides, an ofcer of Lydian origin, whose Greek was
the dialect spoken in Thebes. The likeliest explanation of this description is
that Apollonides was a Theban slave imported from Lydia, a common source
of slaves, who had won his freedom or escaped during the war. Without a
home to return to, but apparently having enough military experience to be an
ofcer, he had joined the mercenary force raised by Cyrus.
At another point the Ten Thousand were on the verge of attacking a people
called the Macronians, who were defending a stream crossing located in difcult terrain. An unnamed ex-slave from Athens, a member of the light infantry, stepped forward. He had realized that this was his original homeland and
that the Macronians were his people. He arranged a truce and a safe-conduct
for the army. Xenophon did not record whether he continued with the mercenaries or decided to stay with the Macronians. The chain of events that led a
slave from Athens to be a soldier with the Ten Thousand might have involved
the rewards to the Arginusae rowers or the desertion to Decelea or the arming
of baggage carriers during the march of the Ten Thousand. As a slave soldier,
at whose no doubt fascinating story we can only guess, he provides a tting
end for this account of the classical period.

Conclusion
The arming of slaves in classical Greece took many forms. Slaves served
as armed police and unarmed hoplite attendants. They were armed as foot
soldiers in crises, especially during sieges but occasionally as hoplites themselves. The discontent of Spartas Helots was taken advantage of by its enemies; at the same time, Helot soldiers were crucial in its land forces, ghting
regularly as hoplites and allowing Sparta to undertake lengthy and distant
campaigns. Slaves rowed in Greek navies, both as a regular practice and in
mass levies in emergencies. Although the participation of slaves in the military
went against a strong strain of Greek thought that stressed a link between
military service and political right, in extremis, Greek states did not hesitate to
enlist their slaves. Such practices, so contrary to Greek citizen militarism,
tended to be neglected in the extant sources.
The Macedonians defeat of Athens and its allies at the battle of Chaeronia
in 338 bc brought the Classical period to an end. The old Greek city-states
entered a period of domination by large kingdoms and their professional or
mercenary armies. The Hellenistic kingdoms resulting from the conquests of
Alexander the Great were not essentially slave societies. Their Greek-speaking

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Peter Hunt

elite still owned slaves, but the rural economy was dominated by a dependent
peasantry. Patterns and consequences of arming slaves changed as a result.
The Roman Empire, which eventually subjugated the Hellenistic kingdoms
and united the Mediterranean, has its own long and complex history of arming slaves spanning more than seven centuries. Roman slaves managed to
stage massive slave revolts. They were nevertheless occasionally freed for
emergency infantry service, used regularly in the navy, and involved in civil
wars. Although some continuities are obvious, differences in the scale of the
Roman Empire, the distribution of slave ownership, military forces, and ideology about slavery and citizenship meant that the conditions and consequences
of arming slaves were quite distinct from those in the small, independent citystates of classical Greece.

Notes
1. Greek warfare: Victor Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York, 1989) and the essays collected in Victor Hanson, ed., Hoplites:
The Classical Greek Battle Experience (London, 1991) provide a good introduction to
hoplite warfare. W. Kendrick Pritchett, The Greek State at War, 5 vols. (Berkeley, 1971
1991) covers a large range of topics. J. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the
Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, 1970) is an admirably readable and concise introduction.
Josiah Ober, Classical Greek Times, in The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the
Western World, ed. M. Howard, G. J. Andreopoulos, and M. R. Shulman (New Haven,
1994) and Victor Hanson, The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots
of Western Civilization, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1999, 219286) provide explanations of the
archaic limits and conventions in terms of the structure of Greek society. Peter Krentz,
Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek Warfare, in War and Violence in Ancient
Greece, ed. Hans van Wees (London, 2000) and Hans van Wees, Politics and the Battleeld: Ideology in Greek Warfare, in The Greek World, ed. A. Powell (London, 1995)
make signicant criticisms of this model.
2. Greek slavery: The seminal works of M. I. FinleyAncient Slavery and Modern
Ideology (Harmondsworth, 1980) and the articles collected in B. Shaw and R. Saller, eds.,
Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (New York, 1982)still provide much of the
conceptual framework for more recent research. N. R. E. Fisher, Slavery in Classical
Greece (London, 1993) provides a balanced introduction with bibliography. Yvon Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca, NY, 1988) is another excellent
overview from a Marxian perspective. T. E. J. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery
(London, 1981) is a useful collection of translated ancient sources. On the controversial
role of slaves in agriculture see Michael Jameson, Agriculture and Slavery in Classical
Athens, Classical Journal 73 (19771978): 122141; Michael Jameson, Agricultural
Labor in Ancient Greece, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium at the
Swedish Institute at Athens, ed. B. Wells (Stockholm, 1992); Hanson, Other Greeks , 63
70; contra Ellen M. Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave (New York, 1988).
3. Lysias 12.19; Xenophon Ways and Means 4.1415.

Arming Slaves and Helots

35

4. See Peter Hunt, The Slaves and the Generals of Arginusae, American Journal of
Philology 122 (2001): 359380.
5. General studies of slaves in Greek warfare: Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece,
163176, provides an English-language summary of many of the conclusions of his
earlier articles. Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, Unfreie im Antiken Kriegsdienst, vol. 1, Athen und
Sparta (Wiesbaden, 1974) is the only comprehensive treatment of the subject. My recent
book, Peter Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge,
UK, 1998), argues for greater slave participation than Garlan and Welwei accept and
discerns a pattern of neglect in our sources. Detailed reactions are found in the reviews by
Paul Cartledge in Slavery and Abolition 20 (1999): 137138, by Jonathan Hall in Classical Philology 94 (1999): 461466, and by N. R. E. Fisher in American Historical Review
106 (2001): 235236. Studies of specic cases of arming slaves and related issues appear
in the relevant footnotes below.
6. IG I.1032; Thucydides 1.55.1, 8.84.2; Herodotus 6.15; Diodorus 14.58.1,
Decree of Themistocles, printed in Michael Jameson, The Provisions for Mobilization in the Decree of Themistocles, Historia 12 (1963): 385404. The proportions
of slaves implied, more or less rmly, in these sources are as follows: more than 20
percent, about 80 percent, more than 50 percent, more than 80 percent (?), and 50
percent (?), respectivelysee text at note 60 for a discussion of some of these passages. My minimum of ten thousand of sixty thousand, 17 percent of the total, is
conservative.
7. Thucydides 7.27.5.
8. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 108115.
9. D. M. Lewis, The Thirty Years Peace, in The Cambridge Ancient History: The
Fifth Century, 2nd ed., ed. D. M. Lewis, J. Boardman, J. K. Davies, and M. Ostwald,
2:121127 (Cambridge, UK, 1992), surveys the controversy.
10. Homer Iliad 12.315321. See The Iliad of Homer, translated with an introduction
by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, 1951).
11. Hanson, Other Greeks, 219242, provides a lucid introduction with bibliography
to the complex and contested relation of military change and the expansion of political
rights. See also Yvon Garlan, War in the Ancient World: A Social History, trans. Janet
Lloyd (London, 1975).
12. Lysias 10.1.
13. Tyrtaeus 1 in Richmond Lattimore, trans., Greek Lyrics (Chicago, 1949), 14.
14. See most recently Barry Strauss, The Athenian Trireme, School of Democracy, in
Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies Ancient and Modern, ed. J. Ober and C.
Hedrick (Princeton, 1996); Barry Strauss, Perspectives on the Death of Fifth-Century
Athenian Seamen, in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. Hans van Wees (London,
2000); and David Pritchard, The Fractured Imaginary: Popular Thinking on Military
Matters in Fifth-Century Athens, Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 28 (1998):
3861.
15. Xenophon [pseud.], The Constitution of the Athenians 1.2.
16. The scholarship on Greek attitudes toward slaves is huge. My views can be found
in Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology (with bibliography), 126138 (polar opposites to
citizens), 146160 (defeated in war), 160164 (childish and cowardly), 4850 and 158
159 (inferior foreigners).

36

Peter Hunt

17. See David Cohen, Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, UK, 1995) on the maintenance of order within Athens. See Oscar Jacob, Les
esclaves publics a Athnes (New York, 1979), 5378, on the Scythian slaves.
18. For example, Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 10821135, 11761226.
19. Paradoxically, this sensitivity probably derived from the Athenian practice of slavery: to be answerable with ones body was the mark of a slave (Demosthenes 22.55,
24.166167). I owe this interpretation of the Scythian slaves to Margaret Imber, Cops
and Robbers and Democratic Ideology, paper presented to the annual meeting of the
American Philological Association, San Diego, December, 1995.
20. Thucydides 7.75.5; cf. Pausanias 1.29.7 with D. W. Bradeen, The Athenian Casualty List of 464 bc, Hesperia 36 (1967): 321328.
21. On slave revolts see M. Fuks, Slave War and Slave Troubles in Chios, in Social
Conict in Ancient Greece (Leiden, 1984); Paul Cartledge, Rebels and Sambos in Classical Greece: A Comparative View, in Crux: Essays in Greek History Presented to
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ed. Paul Cartledge and F. D. Harvey (Exeter, 1985); Garlan,
Slavery in Ancient Greece, 176191.
22. Xenophon Hiero 4.3; see also Hiero 10.4, Plato Republic 578d579b, and Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality (Oxford, 1974), 114 on this attitude.
23. A Hellenistic writer, Philon of Byzantium (5.4.1415), advises that its a good idea
for besieging armies publicly to promise freedom for deserting slaves. Then the defenders
will not be able to arm their slaves for fear of desertion or rebellions. They will also have
to feed their slaves better and will run out of food sooner.
24. Hyperides fragment 28 in C. Jensen, Hyperidis Orationes Sex (Leipzig, 1917).
25. Xenophon Hellenica 1.2.1.
26. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 190194; Leonhard A. Burckhardt, Brger
und Soldaten: Aspecke der Politischen und Militrischen Rolle Athenischer Brger im
Kriegwesen des 4 Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Stuttgart, 1996), 104, 114, 140.
27. Thucydides 3.27.
28. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 2628. Almost all scholars accept the story of
armed slaves at Marathon, since it is hard to imagine a reason for the story to be invented.
29. See Paul Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (Baltimore, 1987) and Jean
Ducat, Les Helots (Paris, 1990) on Helots. The articles about Sparta collected in Anton
Powell, ed., Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success (Norman, OK, 1988),
Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson, eds., The Shadow of Sparta (London, 1994), and
Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell, eds., Sparta: New Perspectives (London, 1999)
give an ample and up-to-date bibliography.
30. Thucydides 4.118.7, 5.23.3.
31. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 2631.
32. Thucydides 5.23.3.
33. Thucydides 4.36.
34. Russell Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to
the End of the Fifth Century bc, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1988), 223224 (no. 74).
35. For the controversial nature of the expression Messenian see Hunt, Slaves,
Warfare, and Ideology, 6869, 181.
36. Diodorus 13.64.57; Xenophon Hellenica 1.2.18.

Arming Slaves and Helots

37

37. An Athenian general still possessed an overenthusiastic bodyguard of Messenians

in the 390s: Hellenica Oxyrhnchia XX (XV) 3.
38. Alcidamas, in scholia to Aristotle Rhetoric 1373b18. See J. Vogt, Ancient Slavery
and the Ideal of Man, trans. T. Wiedemann (Cambridge, 1975), G. Cambiano, Aristotle
and the Anonymous Opponents of Slavery, in Classical Slavery, ed. M. I. Finley (London, 1987), and, most recently, Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge, 1996) for Greek criticisms of slavery. See Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and
Ideology, 177184, for more details about the liberation of the Helots and its effect on
thinking about slavery.
39. On early indications of Messenian mythology see Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and
Ideology, 7679.
40. Pausanias 9.15.6.
41. Thucydides 7.57.8.
42. Thucydides 7.19.3, 7.58.3.
43. For interpretations of this phenomenon see R. J. A. Talbert, The Role of the
Helots in the Class Struggle at Sparta, Historia 38 (1989): 2240; Paul Cartledge,
Richard Talberts Revision of the Spartan-Helot Struggle: A Reply, Historia 40 (1991):
379381; Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 3839, 115120.
44. Herodotus 9.10.1, 9.28.2, 9.29.1.
45. Peter Hunt, The Helots at the Battle of Plataea, Historia 46 (1997): 129144,
includes a discussion of previous scholarship.
46. Thucydides 5.64.2, 5.57.1.
47. Thucydides 7.58.3.
48. Thucydides 4.26.5, 4.80.3.
49. See Talbert, Role of the Helots, 26, for the numbers of Neodamodeis; see Cartledge, Agesilaos, 38, 167168, for the number of Spartans.
50. Xenophon Hellenica 3.3.6, 6.1.14; Xenophon Agesilaus 2.78.
51. Xenophon, a contemporary with Spartan connections, claims that Sparta enlisted
six thousand Helots (Xenophon Hellenica 6.5.2829; cf. Diodorus 15.65.6), but there
were many desertions (Plutarch Agesilaus 32.7).
52. Plato Laws 777cd; Aristotle Politics 1330a2528.
53. Thucydides 1.49.13.
54. For example, Aristophanes Wasps 1097, 11181119; Xenophon [pseud.], Constitution of the Athenians 1.2. See Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 124126, for
further examples and discussion.
55. Regular use of slaves in the navy: Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 83101;
Hunt, Slaves and the Generals; A. J. Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2 and the Crews of
Athenian Triremes, Transactions of the American Philological Association 122 (1992):
257270; Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2 and the Crews of Athenian Triremes: An Addendum, Transactions of the American Philological Association 128 (1998): 89114. Contra: M. Amit, Athens and the Sea: A Study in Athenian Sea Power (Brussels, 1965), 33;
Lionel Casson, Galley Slaves, Transactions of the American Philological Association
97 (1966): 3544; J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov, The Athenian Trireme:
The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship, 2nd ed. (Cambridge,
2000). Welwei, Unfreie im Antiken Kriegsdienst, 65104, takes a middle position.

38

Peter Hunt

56. Thucydides 1.55.1.

57. Thucydides 2.103.1.
58. Thucydides 8.84.2.
59. Thucydides 8.73.5.
60. This inscription, originally IG 2.1951, is now IG 1.1032. The most complete
discussion is still D. R. Laing Jr., A New Interpretation of the Athenian Naval Catalogue
IG II 1951 (Ann Arbor, 1966), but Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2 and Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2: Addendum, focus on the slaves and include recent bibliographies.
61. Vincent Gabrielsen, Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social
Relations (Baltimore, 1994).
62. Regular conscription of citizens for naval service is mentioned in the fourth century: Demosthenes [pseud.] 50.6, 50.7, 50.16. The inscription, IG 1.11271131, suggests a regular draft of citizensas opposed to emergency leviesalready in the fth
century. See Mogens Hansen, Demography and Democracy: The Number of Athenian
Citizens in the Fourth Century b.c. (Herning, Denmark, 1985), 2324.
63. Demosthenes [pseud.] 50.7.
64. Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2: Addendum, 98102, is the most recent treatment
of the ownership of slave rowers. See Vincent Rosivach, Manning the Athenian Fleet,
433426, American Journal of Ancient History 10 (1985): 4166 on the types of free
rowers in different navies.
65. Compare Keith Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in
Social Control (Oxford, 1987), 81112, for Rome.
66. Xenophon [pseud.] Constitution of the Athenians 1.11.
67. These rough calculations for the classical period require several assumptions,
which I regard as likely enough but neither certain nor applicable to all cases: A rowers
full wage at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War was 6 obols per day. I assume 3 obols
per day for the slaves living expenses. Although we have references to 2 obols per day as a
subsistence wage, I allocate a bit of extra money for clothes and incidental expenses. So 6
3 = 3 obols to be divided by master and slave. Our hypothetical master takes 2 obols
per day and the slave 1 obol per day. A sailing season of 100 daysassuming the slave is
with a large summer navy rather than a smaller year-round squadronyields the slave
100 obols per year. An average slave price is 750 obols, so a thrifty slave can afford his
freedom after seven and one-half years of rowing. On rowers wages see the discussion
and bibliography in Margaret L. Cook, Timocrates 50 Talents and the Cost of Ancient
Warfare, Eranos 88 (1990): 6997. On the sailing season see Rosivach, Manning the
Athenian Fleet, 4144. See Hanson, Other Greeks, 6869, 351 n. 34, for bibliography
regarding slave prices.
68. R. H. Randall, The Erechtheum Workmen, American Journal of Archaeology
57 (1953): 199210.
69. Aristophanes Acharnians 161162; Aristophanes Frogs 1074.
70. Thucydides 6.31.3.
71. Thucydides 7.13.2. Note that these replacements were done entirely on the authority of the trierarch against the will of the general in charge.
72. See Graham, Thucydides 7.13.2, 257259, on Thucydides 7.13.2.
73. Thucydides 7.13.3.

Arming Slaves and Helots

39

74. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 111114.

75. Xenophon Hellenica 1.5.48, 1.5.10, 1.5.15, 1.5.20, 1.6.3, 1.6.16.
76. Ibid., 1.6.24 (trans. Brownson). See Hunt, Slaves and the Generals, for a full
treatment of the slaves in the Arginusae navy and the issues raised by their use.
77. On slave miners in Attica see Siegfried Lauffer, Die Bergwerkssklaven von Laurion, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden, 1979). For a brief overview of slave miners in ancient Greece
and Rome see Peter Hunt, Greek and Roman Mines, in The Macmillan Encyclopedia
of World Slavery, ed. P. Finckleman and J. C. Miller (New York, 1998).
78. In Hunt, Slaves and the Generals, I argue that the resentment at the liberation of
the Arginusae slaves may have contributed to the unfair trial and execution of the victorious Athenian generals after the battle .
79. Indeed, the Athenians took some of the advice in Aristophanes Frogs and honored
him for giving it. W. Geoffrey Arnott, A Lesson from the Frogs, Greece and Rome 38
(1991): 1823.
80. Aristophanes Frogs 692702.
81. K. J. Dover, Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford, 1993), 50.
82. Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley, 1993), 106118, presents an
interesting analysis of this strain of thought but does not sufciently acknowledge Greek
prejudice against slaves (see Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 160 n. 85).
83. See Burckhardt, Brger und Soldaten.
84. See Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 194202, on Plato Laws 629a630b and
Aristotle Politics 1255a1316.
85. Scholia to Aristophanes Clouds 6 in D. Holwerda, Prolegomena de Comoedia;
Scholia in Acharnenses, Equites, Nubes, vol. 3, pt. 1 (Groningen, The Netherlands,
1977), 9.
86. Aristophanes Clouds 67. Compare Aristophanes Peace 451.
87. See note 6 above and accompanying text for the minimum number of ten thousand
slaves. A list of slaves from Chios, probably freed for Peloponnesian military service, has
been found: L. Robert, Sur des inscriptions de Chios, Bulletin de Correspondance
Hellnique 59 (1935): 453470. Sparta, too, freed Helots for naval service.
88. Aristotle Ath. Pol. 40.2. See also Phillip Harding, Metics, Foreigners or Slaves?
The Recipients of Honours in IG II.10, Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 67
(1987): 176182.
89. Lysias Against Pancleon (23). See also Lysias Against Simon (3) 5, 33.
90. Xenophon Anabasis 3.1.26, 3.1.31.
91. Ibid., 4.8.4.
92. Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, Unfreie im Antiken Kriegsdienst, vol. 2, Die kleineren und
mittleren griechischen Staaten und die hellenistischen Reiche (Wiesbaden, 1977).
93. Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, Unfreie im Antiken Kriegsdienst, vol. 3, Rom (Wiesbaden,
1988); Norbert Rouland, Les esclaves Romains en temps de guerre (Brussels, 1977).
94. Keith Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 bc70 bc (Bloomington, 1989).

The Mamluk
Institution, or One Thousand Years
of Military Slavery in the Islamic World
reuven amitai

Introduction
The importance, scope, and duration of military slavery in the Islamic
world have no parallel in human history. From the early ninth century ce to
the rst decades of the nineteenth, from Egypt to the edges of Central Asia and
India, military slavery was often the primary form of military organization.
Even when military slavesusually known as ghulams

or mamluksdid

not
constitute the majority of the army of a Muslim state, they often formed its
predominant element. At times, and for long periods, military slaves exploited
their prowess and importance to achieve political inuence, more than occasionally becoming the de facto and even de jure rulers of the state. This chapter
attempts an overview of this important topic, discussing the origins of military
slavery in the Islamic world, its development, crystallization, and eventual
disappearance.
Although there has never been a single work devoted to the phenomenon of
Muslim military slavery, it has received much attention within the framework
of general histories of medieval and early modern Islam. Furthermore, particular aspects of Islamic military slavery or periods when military slaves were
of exceptional importance have been the subject of specialized books and
articles. Readers who have some familiarity with medieval Muslim history
and the matter of military slavery in particularwill note my debt to the

40

The Mamluk
Institution

41

works and thinking of the late David Ayalon. Although the Ayalonian model
of military slavery needs renement and expansion, I nd that on the whole it
provides a satisfying framework for the examination of the phenomenon,
certainly for the later Middle Ages. Saying this, I should mention the important observation of Jrgen Paul, who has drawn attention to the difculty of
generalizing on the subject of Islamic military slavery given the dearth of
detailed studies of specic periods. His caveat can be taken to heart, but with
due caution I will forge ahead, attempting an overview that I hope will convince historians from other elds of the signicance of military slavery in
Islamic history. This is in light of some recent general works about slavery
that give little space to military slavery in general and hardly mention its
decisive role in the political, social, and economic development of the Islamic
Middle East.
Given limitations of space, this chapter is both a survey and an interpretive
essay that puts military slavery front and center in the history of Islam. While
not neglecting the internal dynamics of the institution, I emphasize showing
the decisive role often played by military slaves, mostly Turks, in Middle
Eastern history. There is less reference to primary sources than to the works of
modern scholarship. Considering that we are dealing with about a thousand
years of history for most of the Muslim world, it could not be much different
in the framework of a chapter in a collected work. Some emphasis is placed on
the origins of the institution in the Abbasid

Caliphate of the early ninth

century. Relatively wide coverage is also devoted to the so-called Mamluk

Sultanate, which ruled Egypt and Syria from the mid-thirteenth century until
the coming of the Ottoman Empire to the region in 151617. The Mamluk

Sultanate, in which mostly mamluks

ruled in name and not just behind the
scenes, commands special attention for at least two reasons. The rst is the
pivotal role of this state in world history, not least for having stopped the
Mongol conquests in the Middle East and having eradicated the Crusader
presence in the Levant. Second, owing to the rich historical writing issuing
from the sultanate, the mamluk
phenomenon is best documented for this
period. With necessary caution, one might apply some of the insights derived
from this era to earlier periods.
I would like to emphasize one point at this stage: there is little that is particularly Islamic about this large-scale military slavery. Rather, I am discussing
a social and military institution within the premodern Islamic world. Although
slavery, and by extension military slavery, is recognized by Islamic law, there is
nothing inherently Islamic about the institution from a religious point of view.
We might identify antecedents to the phenomenon in pre-Islamic and early
Islamic society and note certain factors in the Muslim state that contributed to

42

Reuven Amitai

its rise, but the emergence of military slavery was not an a priori necessity
dictated by early Muslim religion, law, or society. Rather, as I hope to show, a
marriage of circumstances (whether happy or not is another matter) took place,
to which were added deliberate decisions by certain rulers. Once established,
military slavery in the Islamic world took on a dynamic of its own, although
individual rulers could indeed contribute to its growth and exact form. Only
when it had clearly outlived its usefulness, and because of its obvious burden on
rulers and on society at large, was military slavery, by now somewhat transformed from the original medieval model, nally eradicated.

The Origins of Military Slavery in the Caliphate

The appearance of large-scale military slavery in the Islamic world is
justiably connected with the name of the Abbasid

caliph Abu Ish aq

alMutasim (r. 83342), the third son of the famous Har
un
al-Rashd (r. 789
809) to take the throne. Although during his rule the phenomenon appears to
have been full-blown, the antecedents go back some time. In order to best
illuminate Islamic military slavery, I rst trace briey the development of the
army of the Islamic state in its rst two centuries of existence.
The Muslim army that burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 630s was
composed almost exclusively of Arab tribesmen, not all of whom, however,
were nomadic bedouin. Led by capable commanders and faced with enemies
in relative disarray (the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires), these forces succeeded in the space of a generation in conquering Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and
much of the Caucasus and North Africa. Already in this early period, nonArab elementsmostly from Iranwere integrated into the army of the expanding Muslim Empire, which was strapped for suitable manpower. Under
the Umayyads (661750) the army remained mainly Arab but was increasingly professionalized and limited to troops from Syria, the stronghold of the
dynasty. The coming of the Abbasids,

whose armed revolution against the

Umayyads was successfully launched from Khurasan in northeastern Iran,
heralded a fundamental change in the composition of the army. This transformation was probably not immediately discerned, since Arab tribes stationed in the east and, in particular, Arab commanders were among the major
elements in the Abbasid

revolutionary armies. But Abu Muslim, the commander of the revolutionary forces, had already instigated an important
change by registering the non-Arab troops in the dwan
(the payment list)
not by genealogy (that is, tribe) but by residence, thereby facilitating the decline and eventual disappearance of the Arab tribal component of the caliphal
army. Early on, part of the Abbasid

army was composed of mixed Arab-

The Mamluk
Institution

43

Iranian troops from Khurasan, some no longer speaking Arabic. These troops
were known as Abna
(sons of) Khuras
an,
although the appellation may
have been initially applied also to the Arab tribal forces who had been stationed in Khurasan. Successive waves of Abna
Khuras
an
in the rst seventy years or so of Abbasid

rule contributed to the ever-growing non-Arab

composition of the army. These newer Abna
contingents were also supplemented by converted Iranians from Transoxania (mainly modern Uzbekistan),
which had been decisively conquered in the late Umayyad period. These
Transoxanian forces, which may have contained some Turkish elements, were
valued for their military skills because they had competed for generations with
the Turkish tribes of the nearby Eurasian steppes. Thus, during the early
Abbasid

period, an increasing proportion of the Muslim army originated in

the eastern part of the empire and beyond. From a military point of view, at
least, the eyes of the Muslim political establishment were looking east and
were soon to fall squarely on the Turks, to whom I have just alluded.
The Arab component in the army declined in turn. As stated above, much of
the actual ghting done on behalf of the Abbasids

during their revolution

(747750) was conducted by Arab tribesmen, and Arabs had remained a force
of some importance even in the civil war (811813) between the two sons of
Har
un
al-Rashd, al-Amn (809813) and al-Mamun
(813833). Yet gradually the Arabs had been shunted aside in the military. During the reign of alMamun,
they were steadily removed from the dwan.
Two factors seem to
account for this development. First, large swaths of the Arab population had
settled in the towns and cities (and perhaps also in the countryside), adopting a
sedentary lifestyle and mixing with elements of the indigenous population that
had converted to Islam. By settling, these Arabs had gradually lost their warlike qualities, or at least their desire to go to war. Second, the Arab populations, both the settled Arabs and those who remained nomads, had tribal,
political, and religious agendas that competed with the interests of the ruler.
Their loyalty, as a consequence, was often far from assured.
Another antecedent to military slavery was the institution known as the
mawal
. The term mawal
(plural of mawla)
is used in several ways in early
Islamic history, leading to some confusion among generations of modern students and scholars. It was applied originally to clients of Arab tribes, then to
the earlier converts to Islam, who had indeed also become clients of Arab (now
Muslim) tribesmen, and subsequently to all converts to Islam among the conquered population. By the early Abbasid

period it was being used in this lastmentioned sense less and less: with the exponential increase in converts and
the increasing mixing with Arab Muslims, a distinctive term was thus unnecessary. Mawal
then became more frequently applied to one particular type of

44

Reuven Amitai

convert: the former prisoners of war and freed slaves, often from faraway
lands, who at some point converted to Islam and upon their release remained
loyal to a patron, often the ruler. These freedmen, whom Ayalon called imported mawali
to distinguish them from mawal
who were local converts,
appear to have been predominantly of an eastern provenance, that is Iranians,
Transoxanians, and even Turks. There were many hundreds of them at the
Abbasid

court, where they were cultivated and given great responsibility, even
fullling at times a military role. These imported mawal
, certainly when they
were ghting mawal
, represent a kind of proto-mamluk
institution and display most of the characteristics of military slavery: isolation and alienation
from the local population, along with loyalty to and dependence on a patron,
not necessarily a royal one. As Ayalon noted, the ties between a slave and
patron were not severed with the slaves manumission. Mutual loyalty (wala)

constituted the basis of their relations.

One notable example of these ghting mawal
can be seen from a passage by
A
the historian al-Tabar
(d. 923) describing the behavior of a senior ofcers
entourage of freedmen during the civil war between al-Amn and al-Mamun.

The formers governor in the province of Ahwaz

in southwest Iran, one
Muhammad

b. Yazd al-Muhallab, found himself in a losing battle and told

his mawal
to ee. They refused, replying: By God! If we do so, we would
cause you great injustice. You have manumitted us from slavery, and elevated
us from a humble position and raised us from poverty to riches. And after all
that, how can we abandon you and leave you in such a state. Oh no! Instead of
that we shall advance in front of you and die under your steed. May God curse
this world and life altogether after your death. There upon the mawal
hamstrung their horses and fought together with their patron until they were all
killed.
Abu Ish aq
al-Mutasims creation of the rst mamluk
regiment occurred
during the second decade of the eighth century, early in the reign of his brother
al-Mamun,
a caliph known for his efforts to create a more centralized state.
During his twenty-year reign al-Mamun
must have at least tacitly agreed to
the establishment of a new and somewhat different ghting force, one composed exclusively of Turkish slaves. This unit, numbering about three thousand to four thousand troops, was a decisive factor behind Abu Ish aqs
success
in gaining the throne at his brothers death. Their role, however, was not only
internal politics and security, although this was evidently their initial purpose.
The mamluk
regiment also eventually played an important part in some of the
later campaigns against the Byzantines on the northern Syrianeastern Anatolian frontier.
The establishment of the rst large-scale royal mamluk
formation repre-

The Mamluk
Institution

45

sented a convergence of several factors. The rst is the mawal

system, combining alienation from the local population, patron-client relations, and usually eastern provenance. To this was added the element of slavery (riqq), an
institution with pre-Islamic Arabian and Near Eastern antecedents that had
been further legitimized and crystallized in early Islam. According to Hugh
Kennedy, that these Turks were slaves was not the decisive factor; rather what
was important was that they were from the periphery; he compares them with
the armies of other states where military forces were composed of marginal
elements. Kennedy is correct, of course, to stress the peripheral nature of the
mamluks,

to whom I will refer henceforth as the military slaves of the caliphate. It may be, however, that he has gone too far in downplaying the signicance of their passing through slavery. Rather, this status institutionalized
their subservient position vis--vis their patrons and their difference from the
indigenous population, and it facilitated their importation from far away.
That military slavery in some form was to be found for a thousand yearsin
spite of a modication of the systemindicates the importance attributed to it
in political and military circles.
The third signicant factor was the decisive inclusion of the Turks, who at
this point entered the Islamic Middle East for the rst time in relatively large
numbers. Muslim rulers and generals had been looking eastward for some
time, and quality military manpower had long been imported from the regions
near the Eurasian steppe. In an early example, the governor of Iraq, Ubaydallah
b. Ziyad
b. Abhi, had brought in a large number of Bukharans from
Transoxania in 686 to serve in his army. Apparently, the peoples of Transoxania and Khurasan had achieved this reputation because of the expertise that
they had achieved ghting the Turks, then living in the steppe north of the
Jaxartes (Sir Darya) River. In the early ninth century, the decision was made to
seek what appears to have been the best available soldiers. The Turks had
numerous advantages, not the least being that they were pagans and thus
could be enslaved with legal ease. Evidently they were also available in
relatively large numbers. Most important, however, the Turks of the steppe
were well known for their outstanding military qualities, such as fortitude and
discipline, as well as for horsemanship and archery. Relatively recent arrivals
in this part of the Eurasian steppe, they were heirs to a centuries-old military
tradition going back to the Scythians and beyond, which combined mobility
with repower. The former was directly derived from their lifestyle of nomadic pastoralism, which was facilitated by the domestication of the horse.
Inhabitants of the steppe were by denition potential cavalrymen. Firepower, anachronistic as it may initially appear, accurately describes the effect
of massed and disciplined archers using the composite bow to great effect.

46

Reuven Amitai

This combination of cavalry and archery had made nomads from the Eurasian
steppeincluding those who came before and after the various Turkic groupingsthe scourge of much of the adjacent sedentary world: China, Iran, Asia
Minor, and Europe. The introduction of the stirrup in the early modern period
only contributed to the effectiveness of Eurasian mounted archery.
Many contemporary (or nearly contemporary) Muslim sources waxed effusive about the martial qualities of the Turks. Several examples will illustrate
these characteristics and the way they were perceived by a few contemporary
and slightly later Muslim observers. The tenth-century geographer al-Istakhr
wrote: And the Turks constituted [the caliphs] armies because of their superiority over the other races in prowess, valour, courage and intrepidity. AlJa hi
z, a ninth-century bellettrist from Baghdad, writes that [the Turks] became to Islam a source of reinforcement and an enormous army, and to the
Caliphs a protection and a shelter and an invulnerable armour as well as an
innermost garment worn under the upper garment. Another tenth-century
A
geographer, Ibn Hawqal,
says of the Turks: The most precious slaves are
those arriving [in Khurasan] from the land of the Turks. There is no equal to
the Turkish slaves among all the slaves of the earth. The last passage is short
on details regarding the advantages of the Turks, but it does provide a further
indication of the esteem in which they were held.
The idea behind the system of military slavery enacted by al-Mutasim,
perhaps abetted by al-Mamun,
was to take this quality military manpower as
a sort of raw material. Little is known of the actual working details of this
incipient system, but I might extrapolate from the mamluk
sultanate of several
centuries later, aware that I may well be anachronistic. Young Turks were
enslaved and imported at a relatively young age (probably eight to twelve
years), when they had been somewhat formed by their environment and society and had picked up the rudiments of riding and archery. They were converted to Islam, given some basic religious instruction, and more military
training over several years, raising their nascent skills to a high level. Being
isolated by origin, language, and location from the local population, they
focused their loyalty on their patron. These rst mamluks
were, of course,
loyal to their patron, Prince Abu Ish aq,
soon to become Caliph al-Mutasim.
This reconstruction of the origins of the institution of military slavery in
Islam is at variance with that offered by some scholars. Muhammad Shaban has
called into question the importance of the Turkish element, seeing Turk as a
general appellation for a hodgepodge of peoples from the periphery of the
Islamic world and beyond. In addition, he doubted the importance of the role of
slavery, noting that several signicant Turks were in fact free and of noble
background. Similarly, Christopher Beckwith suggested that the origin of the

The Mamluk
Institution

47

mamluk
institution was not in slavery; rather, it was the custom of Central
Asian rulers to surround themselves with entourages of youths culled from
the sons of noble retainers and allies. Both of these approaches have been cogently rebutted by Matthew Gordon, who in his recent book The Breaking of a
Thousand Swords shows inter alia that we are indeed dealing with a large number of Turkish-speaking slaves. Gordon states that both authors fail to discuss
the body of evidence indicating an early, servile/slave status on the part of the
Turks serving al-Mutasim. . . . There is no question but that many of the Samarran Turks, at an initial stage, were both slaves and soldiers: again, it would be
perverse not to relate their history closely to the Mamluk
institution.
Not long after ascending to the throne, al-Mutasim took the radical step of
establishing a new capital, Samarr

a,
about one hundred and twenty kilometers north of Baghdad and also along the Tigris River. The caliph seems to have
had two goals: rst, to isolate his guard corps, in the hope of keeping these
troops as uncontaminated as possible by the local population and its preoccupations, and second, to defuse intensifying opposition from other units of
the Abbasid

army and the inhabitants. Samarr

a was to remain the caliphal

capital for more than fty years. Built ex nihilo, the capital featured an enormous hippodrome constructed to train the mamluks
in horsemanship, including attacking in small tactical units while shooting arrows, before wheeling
around and permitting the approach of another unit.
Eunuchs played an important role in the training of the young mamluks.

In
a posthumously published study Ayalon suggested that eunuchs contributed
indirectly to the introduction of military slavery. A large body of royal eunuchs
had long been in existence at the caliphal court (even before the Abbasids).

The ruler placed great trust in this group (primarily as guardians of his harem),
who in a sense were already involved in education (of the children in the
harem), making them ready-made educators of the young mamluks.

Their
particular physiognomy perhaps also made them natural preventers of sexual
harassment from older mamluks.

With such educational infrastructure already in place, the establishment of a large unit of military slaves was greatly
facilitated. In short, many eunuchs continued to serve in the harem in addition
to being the training sergeants of the mamluk
corps, a position they were
also to enjoy later in the mamluk
sultanate of Egypt and Syria. In court politics, eunuchs were also to play a key role as intermediaries between the mamluks
and the royal harem, particularly at times of political instability.
Although some young slaves might be picked up as captives in the intermittent warfare on the northeastern frontier of the caliphate, other long-term
arrangements had to be established to enable the regular supply of candidates
for the royal guard corps. A supply system based on independent trading (but

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Reuven Amitai

enjoying royal patronage) was soon established. This system depended on

cooperation in the steppe society. A large number of young male slaves could
be provided either by local princes or by tribal leaders raiding other tribal
groups and taking young men as captives, or by the families and tribal groups
themselves selling their sons, particularly in difcult times, such as famines. As
the geographer Yaqut
(d. 1229) writes: If a man [of the Kimik tribe of Turkey] begets a son, he would bring up and provide for him and take care of him
until he attains puberty. Then he would hand [his pubescent son] a bow and
arrows and would drive him out of his abode telling him: fend for yourself!,
and he would treat him [henceforth] as a stranger and foreigner. There are
amongst [the Kimik] those who sell their sons and daughters in order to cover
their expenses. Thus at about the onset of puberty the bonds between father
and son among at least some of the Turks were weakened, enabling the latters
separation and sale; in addition, tribesmen would sell their progeny when in
economic distress.
The need for an ongoing trade in young mamluks
touches on another matter
of signicance. Al-Mutasim evidently had toyed with the idea of mating his
Turkish military slaves with Turkish women, thus creating a self-propagating
mamluk
ethnicity. This idea was, however, soon abandoned (although not by
al-Mutasim): the Muslim political and military elite evidently understood that
the sons of mamluks
did not enjoy the qualities of their fathers. Growing up in
the caliphal capital far from the milieu of the steppe made them less hardy, as
well as less naturally exposed to the basic skills of riding and archery. Perhaps
more important, no matter how hard the authorities tried, the sons of the
mamluks
could not be cut off from the local people with their religious and
political allegiances. Another focus of loyalty would be their family. It soon
became clear that the preferred way to maintain the system of military slavery
in the caliphate was not to base it on the progeny of the mamluks
but continually to bring in fresh recruits from the steppes, thus necessitating the trade
system described in the previous paragraph. The famous North African historian Ibn Khaldun
(d. 1406) gave expression to the nature of this continually
replicating military elite in a famous passage on the mamluk
system (cited
at length at the end of this chapter): Thus, one intake comes after another
and generation follows generation, and Islam rejoices in the benet which it
gains through them, and the branches of the kingdom ourish with the freshness of youth.
What happened to the sons of mamluks?

It appears that many of them,

perhaps most, were absorbed by the larger society, some even becoming religious scholars. They might enter the army but usually were not members of
prestigious units. On occasion, however, a very talented or well-connected son

The Mamluk
Institution

49

of a mamluk,
in particular a senior ofcer, might achieve high administrative
or military ofce; this was an individual achievement and not representative of
A ulun,
his social group. One notable example is Ahmad

b. T
who received the
governorship of Egypt in 868 and turned the country into a virtual independent polity, until his descendents were removed from power in 905. Although
A ulun
of Turkish mamluk
descent, Ibn T
established neither a Turkish nor a
mamluk
state. It was simply one of several all-but-independent provinces that
emerged from the fragmenting Abbasid

caliphate from the mid-ninth century

onward. In this case, it just happens that the founder of the state had a father
who had been a Turkish mamluk.

In theory, this system of military slavery had two major advantages: loyalty
to the patron, still the caliph, and the maintenance of a high level of military
skills based on the use of disciplined mounted archery. On the whole, this
newly constituted guard corps proved itself in the rst generation of its existence and certainly did so during the reign of al-Mutasim, giving him political
support and ghting well on the frontier against the Byzantines (although
there was not a major breakthrough on that front). Yet, while the loyalty of
mamluks
to their patron was a given that generally proved itself over time, it
was far from certain that this fealty would pass to his son or any other successor. The mamluks,

as individuals and as units, had economic and political

interests that were usually furthered by their patrons but often not by his
successors, who frequently chafed under the tutelage (not necessarily a tacit
one) of the veteran mamluk
ofcers. To this can be added the new rulers desire
to further the interests of his own mamluks,

who in turn were expected to

strengthen their patrons position. The result was potential conict over matters of political and economic control, in particular, jobs, revenue-generating
lands, and the states resources in general.
This seems to be the background of the crisis of 861, when Caliph alMutawakkil was murdered by a group of senior Turkish ofcers, most of them
having had slave status. This event led to the onset of political instability in
the capital and the central province of Iraq, which in turn led to the gradual
disintegration of the empire, with rst far-ung provinces and then those
closer to home becoming increasingly independent (although most maintained
titular loyalty to the caliphate). The various units of Turkish slave soldiers,
each commanded by their ofcer, who was usually himself of slave origin,
played an important role in this political confusion, which often erupted in
street ghting or in warfare in the surrounding countryside. The results of
these struggles for power and resources, involving ever-changing coalitions of
ofcers (mostly Turkish), bureaucrats, members of the royal family, women
from the harem, and other gures, were continual weakening of the caliphs

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Reuven Amitai

power even in Baghdad and the gradual separation of de facto and de jure rule.
During this time mamluks
often acted as condottieri in Iraq and western Iran,
wandering around following only their commander and looking out solely for
their own material welfare. Only in 944, with the coming of the Buwayhids (or
Buyads),

Shii Iranian freebooters from the hills of Daylam, to the south of

the Caspian Sea, was some semblance of order restored in the central provinces of the Abbasid

state. The caliph remained but was henceforth little more

than a puppet.

Slave Soldiers in the Era of Caliphal Disintegration

Besides mamluk
units remaining in what was left of the caliphal armies
and freebooters of mamluk
origin, soldiers who were of military slave origin
were found in the armies of the various independent dynasties that arose
throughout the empire. Perhaps the most important of these states were those
of the Sam
anids,

a family of relatively noble Iranian origin from Transoxania

who became the rulers of this region along with Khurasan at the end of the
ninth century, holding effective control for about a hundred years (and continuing to rule over smaller regions until 1005). Before their rise to virtual
independence, the Sam
anids

had been one of the leading families in the region,

being, inter alia, purveyors of mamluks
to the caliphal court. The strategic
position of the Sam
anids

state, straddling the trade routes from the Eurasian

steppe, enabled them to monopolize the trade in young military slaves. This
monopoly gave them two advantages: rst, the abilityexploited at times
to put pressure on the caliphate, and second, the chance to pick the best slaves
for their own army. Indeed, units of mamluks
formed an increasingly dominant component of their army, thus helping to weaken the role of the volunteer jihad
ghters in the army and contributing to a growing alienation of the
civilian elite from the state.
The Ghaznawid state, the successor of the Sam
anids

in Khurasan, is an
important link in the history of the institution of military slavery and the
Islamic state of the Middle Ages. Founded in the last third of the tenth century
by a Sam
anid

ghulam,
the Ghaznawid state (centered in Ghazna, in modernday Afghanistan) contributed to the military expansion of Islam into northern
India and the Punjab. Its administration was a further development of IranianIslamic bureaucratic methods, which were to have a long-term impact on a
larger area (via their successors in the Seljuq dynasty). Certain Turkish elements can also be discerned, in for example, titles and other forms of legitimization. Because of the origin of the dynasty and the proximity of the state to
Central Asia, it should come as no surprise that Turkish slave soldiers played a

The Mamluk
Institution

51

major role in military affairs (and, indirectly, in political life), although other
elements such as the Iranian Ghurids were also prominent. In spite of its
mamluk
origins, it would be premature to call the Ghaznawid kingdom a
mamluk
state: slave soldiers may have been the dominant military element,
but one cannot yet speak of a class of mamluk
ofcers running the state, in
name or in practice.
Slave soldiers continued to play a signicant part in the Ghaznawids successor state, the Seljuq Empire, which eventually stretched, albeit for a relatively short time, from the Oxus to the Mediterranean Sea. The Seljuqs (perhaps more properly: Selchq) were a leading family of the Oghuz peoples
(rendered Ghuzz by Muslim writers), a Turkish-speaking tribal federation.
Leading their Turcoman followers into Transoxania and then Khurasan at
the beginning of the eleventh century, they soon overcame the Ghaznawids
(who were pushed into modern-day eastern Afghanistan and northwestern
India) in the aftermath of the battle of Dandanq
an
in 1040.
Although the exact dates and circumstances of the Seljuq familys conversion to Islam are unclear, there is no doubting their commitment to the new
faith as they understood it. The Seljuqs quickly adopted from their Ghaznawid
predecessors many aspects of the long-established Iranian-Islamic administrative culture, which they were to further develop, and which was to spread
subsequently to areas west of Iran. Among the matters that they adopted from
the Ghaznawids was a commitment to a militant Sunni Islam, which is certainly one reason behind their Drang nach Westen: Seljuq expansion into
western Iran and Iraq was at least partially motivated by their desire to liberate
the Abbasid

caliph from the patronage and control of the Shii Buwayhids.

In this they succeeded in 1055, subsequently eliminating Buwayhid power
throughout the region. The Seljuq leader, Alp Arslan (10631072), behaved
with more courtesy toward the caliph and provided him with greater nancial
and political leniency, but it was clear that the latter gure was still mainly a de
jure ruler. Real power remained in the hands of Alp Arslan, who was granted
the title of sulftan,
which up to that time had generally meant rule or authority but henceforth could be understood to mean the de facto ruler, ostensibly appointed by the caliph to rule in his name.
The expansion westward was also accompanied by structural changes within the Seljuq state, the foremost among which were military reforms. Although
the mainstay of the Seljuq army had hitherto consisted of the Turcoman tribes,
this was becoming increasingly problematic. The tribal leadership was chang
under the Seljuq administration, which saw itself more and more as a traditional Muslim state that guaranteed security for the entire population (which
in turn encouraged higher tax receipts). The Seljuq family was no longer

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Reuven Amitai

satised with the traditional role reserved for the tribal chieftain among the
Turkish tribes on the Eurasian steppe, a role that left a great deal of autonomy
to smaller tribal units. The tribes themselves were dissatised with the centralized regime, which worked to restrict the freedom of the nomads, preventing unbridled raiding, foraging, and pasturing. Both sides were thus in a sense
relieved when the Turcomans began moving to the northwestern region of
Iran, known as Azerbaijan. The Turcomans found an area with large, wellwatered pasturelands with climatic conditions somewhat similar to those of
the Eurasian steppe and thus appropriate for their livestock. At the same time,
the proximity of the Byzantine Empire could give free rein to the desire for
raiding, now done under the guise of holy war. The Seljuqs, on the other hand,
had gotten the Turcomans out of their hair. The tribes, however, were retrievable if needed for a campaign.
The withdrawal of the Turcomans necessitated the creation or the calling-in
of an alternative military force, for both internal political and external security
needs. The Seljuqs looked no further than the already tried institution of
military slavery, well developed under their Ghaznawid predecessors and in
the various regions that they had subsequently conquered. According to some
studies, this mamluk
corps numbered between ten thousand and fteen thou
sand men and was chosen from among Turkish youths from tribes still living
as nomads on the steppes close to the Islamic countries, or perhaps among the
Turcoman tribesmen. Interesting testimony is provided by Nizam
al-Mulk, the
Seljuq wazir (head administrator) and the author of the Persian work in the
mirror for princes genre, Siyasat-n

amah

(The Book of Statecraft): military

slaves ( ghulam
an,
the Persian plural of ghulam)

were to be taken from the

Turcomans, and they should be enrolled and maintained in the same way as
military slaves of the palace. When they are in continuous employment they
will learn the use of arms and become trained in service. Then they will settle
down with other people and with growing devotion serve as military slaves,
and cease to feel that aversion [to settled life] with which they are naturally
imbued.
The relatively small size of the mamluk
corps, considering the vast expanse
of the Seljuq Empire, may have been a result of the expenses incurred in
establishing and maintaining this type of formation. In order to nance this
system, the Seljuq state, under the tutelage of administrators such as Nizam
alMulk, adopted the iqfta
system, which had its origins in Iraq in the late ninth
century. The iqta
scheme was the allocation of lands to ofcers, who had the
right to collect tax revenues for themselves, instead of having state ofcials do
it and then pass the revenues on to the military class. With these revenues the
ofcer was to support himself and his household, including his own retinue of

The Mamluk
Institution

53

troops, which meant their purchase, training, and upkeep. Unlike feudalism,
this system did not usually entail administration of the territory in question.
The possessor of the iqta
(known as a muqfta) could not pass the allocation on
to his sons; rather, it returned to the state upon his death or when he was no
longer able to serve. In addition, iqta
holders generally lived in the cities
and not in their alloted area in the countryside, as did their European counterparts. Finally, the iqfta
system did not have the trappings of the homage and
contractual relations that characterized European feudal relations. Under the
Seljuqs the iqta
system spread throughout the eastern Islamic world and became the predominant form of payment to the military elite in the succeeding
centuries.
The nest hour of the Seljuq mamluk
corps was its effort against the Byzantines at the battle of Manzikert (Turkish: Malazgird) in eastern Anatolia in
August 1071. According to one Arabic source, a contingent of about four
thousand mamluks
(here referred to as ghilman,
the plural of ghulam)

stuck

with the sultan, Alp Arslan, when most of the army had deserted him. Their
steadfastness ultimately led to complete victory, including the capture of the
Byzantine emperor, and the subsequent breakdown of the Byzantine frontier
system. This development in turn resulted in the permanent occupation of
Anatolia by Turcomen tribes, the subsequent establishment of Seljuq rule, and
eventual turkication of Asia Minor, in essence the birth of Turkey. The important role of the mamluk
corps had vast long-range effects.

Mamluks
in the Period of the Crusades
The united Seljuq Empire was only to last until the 1090s. Subsequently,
Seljuq power retreated to Iran, although a cadet branch of the Seljuq family was
to rule Anatolia until 1243 (and thereafter as Mongol vassals until the early
fourteenth century). The following discussion focuses on developments in the
region stretching from Egypt to southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq today.
It is here that we see the next important stage in the development of the mamluk

institution, the background for which was the arrival of the crusaders in 1097,
their subsequent conquests, and the establishment of the Frankish states along
the Syrian and Palestinian coast, as well as farther inland, including most of
Palestine, a large chunk of trans-Jordan, and the area around Edessa east of the
Euphrates. In Syria and the Jazra (northern Mesopotamia, today divided
among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq), political power remained mostly in the hands
of various Turkish princes and ofcers, almost all derived in some form from
the Seljuq state, often at war among themselves. In addition, they were invariably at odds with the Shii Fa
timid state in Egypt, for political and religious

54

Reuven Amitai

reasons. This disunity and inghting permitted the crusaders conqueststhe

height being the taking of Jerusalem in 1099and the establishment of their
kingdom.
Over the course of the next half-century two trends emerged: the growing
expression of an anticrusader, jihad-inspired

ideology and the gradual coalescing of political unity. An important milestone was the unication of Mosul
and Aleppo by Zengi in the late 1120s. Zengi, whose father had been an
important mamluk
ofcer of the Seljuqs, had started off as an atabeg (a guardian of a Seljuq prince) in Mosul before becoming the de facto ruler of northern
Syria and much of the Jazra. His apotheosis as a great jihadi warrior took place
after he took Edessa from its Frankish ruler in 1144. After his death in 1146,
Zengi was succeeded by his son Nur
al-Dn Mahm
ud.
The latter scored few
signicant achievements against the crusaders, but he did bring about the
unication of Muslim Syria, gaining control of large revenues that could be
devoted to the building of a large military force. Although both these rulers
employed tribal forces such as Turcomans and Kurds, the mainstay of their
armies consisted of Turkish mamluk
units. Such units probably made up the
bulk of the expeditionary forces sent to Egypt three times in the 1160s, led by
A a h al-Dn,
the Kurdish general Sirkuh,
who was accompanied by his nephew Sal
usually known in the West as Saladin. During more than two decades of intensive political and military activitywhich included Saladins rise to power in
Egypt, his eradication of the Fa
timid regime, the long campaign to gain control
over Muslim Syria and the Jazra, and his wars with the crusaders, culminating
A ttn in northern Palestine in 1187 and the subsequent
in the great victory of Ha
capture of Jerusalem, followed by the need to deal with the challenge presented
by the Third CrusadeSaladins forces were composed to a large degree of
professional cavalrymen, most of whom were Turkish mamluks
of sundry

origin. There is no reason to assume that this situation changed during the
half-century or so after Saladins death (1193), when his various direct descen
dants, and, more important, those of his brother al-Malik al-Adil,
collectively
known as the Ayyubids,

ruled a vast federation stretching from southern Egypt

and Yemen to eastern Anatolia. The Arabic sources are replete with mention of
mamluks,

either as individuals or as groups.

The signicance of Turkish slave soldiers was to become even more pronounced during the reign of Saladins great-nephew al-Malik al-SA ali
h Ayyub,

who rst gained control of Damascus in 1238. In the following year, he lost
the throne when he was defeated in a battle with a coalition of his relatives,
fellow princes in Egypt and Syria. Although al-SA ali
h spent some time in prison
(123940), he soon returned to power, this time to become ruler over Egypt as
well as most of Syria and beyond the Euphrates. The state that he established

The Mamluk
Institution

55

was much more centralized than that of his predecessors, and he also introduced an element of political cruelty that had been previously lacking. One of
the bulwarks of his regime was a relatively large and disciplined mamluk
unit

A
known as the Sali
hiyya

(after his royal title) or, more famously, the Bahriyya.

The reasons for his defeat in 1239 and the conclusions that he drew in its
aftermath are nicely put by the fteenth-century historian al-Maqrz:
Al-Malik al-SA ali
h [Ayyub]
is he who established the Bahr
Mamluks [almamal
k al-bahriyya]
f
in Egypt. It was thus: It happened to him what has been
mentioned before, during the night when he lost his rule, with the abandonment of him by the Kurds and others of his army; no one remained with him
except for his mamluks.

He was grateful to them for this. When he gained

control over the province of Egypt, he bought many mamluks,

and made
them the mainstay of his army.[] He arrested the ofcers who had belonged
to his father and brother, imprisoned them, and conscated their land allocations. He gave ofcer-commissions to his mamluks,

and they became his inner

entourage and encircled him in his pavilion. He called them al-Bahriyya,

because of their residence with him on the fortress of al-Rawda, on the Nile
River [bahr
f al-nl, literally the sea of the Nile].

Although al-SA ali

h was building on a long-standing tradition of military
slavery, its importance was brought home to him by the experience just cited.
An additional factor was the relative abundance (and thus low price) of boys
and young men hailing from the Turkish tribes known as the Qipchaqs, who
lived as nomads in the steppes north of the Black Sea and who lled the slave
markets ca. 1240. As the early fourteenth-century Egyptian writer al-Nuwayr
writes: The [Mongols] fell upon [the Qipchaqs] and brought upon most of
them death, slavery and captivity. At this time, merchants bought [these captives] and brought them to the [various] countries and cities. The rst who
demanded many of them, and made them lofty and advanced them in the army
was al-Malik al-SA ali
h Najm al-Dn Ayyub.
There was a certain irony here:
the Mongols had inadvertently contributed to the formation of a military unit
that was to play an important role in defeating them and holding them at bay
from 1260 onward.
The rst great moment for the Bahriyya

was their role in repulsing the

crusade led by Louis IX of France in 12491250. Several months after landing in Damiette on the Egyptian coast, the crusaders started moving down
through the Delta toward Cairo. Meanwhile, the Egyptian army, led by the
dying al- SA ali
h Ayyub,
moved north, taking up a position at the fortied town
of al-Mansura
in the eastern Delta. For several weeks there was a standoff,
with the two armies facing each other across a canal. It was at this time that the
sultan passed away. A junta was formed to run affairs until the sultans son,

56

Reuven Amitai

Turansh

ah,
could arrive from the Jazra (northern Mesopotamia). In the
meanwhile, one morning at dawn, the Franks launched a surprise attack,
leading to a Muslim rout. It was at this time that the Bahriyya

appeared and
saved the day. Ibn al-Furat
(d. 1405) describes the resulting melee:
Things were near to a total defeat involving the complete destruction of Islam,
but Almighty God sent salvation. The damned King of France (al-malik raydafrans

[ roi de France) reached the door of the palace of the Sultan al-Malik
al-SA ali
h and matters were at the most critical and difcult state. But then
the Turkish Bahr
squadron and the Jamdar
s,[] mamluks of the Sultan,
amongst them the commander Rukn al-Dn Baybars al-Bunduqdar
al-SA ali
h

al-Najm,[] showed their superiority and launched a great attack on the

Franks which shook them and demolished their formations. . . . this was the
rst encounter in which the polytheist dogs were defeated by means of the
Turkish lions (wa-kanat

hadhahi

al-waqa awwal waqia

untufsira fha bi-usud

al-turk ala kilab

al-shirk).

Soon the Franks took the decision to retreat. They were subsequently surrounded and were then forced to surrender together with King Louis. The role
of the mamluks
in general, and the Bahriyya

in particular, is indisputable.

The Establishment of the Mamluk

Sultanate
While the Bahriyya

were still basking in the glory of their victory, Turan

shah
arrived at the scene. He soon made a number of political errors, chief
among them not giving the Bahriyya

and other military elements the credit

that they thought they deserved and also advancing his own men, including
mamluks,

to positions of inuence. Feeling both slighted and endangered, the

Bahriyya

struck rst. A group of them, including the future sultan Baybars, fell
upon Turansh

ah
and assassinated him. The murder of a problematic ruler,
particularly a politically inept son of the previous one, was not an unknown
phenomenon in the Muslim world. Invariably, the next step was to nd another member of the royal family to sit on the throne, generally a youngster
who would be amenable to the control of the senior ofcers. For reasons that
are not completely clear, this time the decision was different: the senior ofcers, including those of the Bahriyya

(one faction, albeit an important one, in

the army), chose to shunt the Ayyubid

family aside and to run the state them

selves. There was, of course, no ideology of mamluk
liberation at play, or
any previously conceived plan for running the country. In fact, it would be ten
years, before the nascent state began to assume some semblance of order, and
then only in the face of the Mongol threat. In the interim, the regime was
characterized by internal strife and ongoing struggles with the Ayyubid

princes

The Mamluk
Institution

57

of Syria. Shajar al-Durr, al-SA ali

h Ayyubs

beloved wife, also of Qipchaq

Turkish origin, played a key role in the events that followed his death until her
death in 1257. She even sat briey on the throne in 1250, but Islamic political
culture was not ready to have an ofcial woman ruler, and she was removed.
She married Aybeg, the new strongman of the emerging regime, but still remained a power to be reckoned with. During these years the Bahriyya

fell
out with much of the remainder of the military elite. Matters reached a head in
1254, when their leader, Aqtay, was murdered, and many were imprisoned.
About seven hundred of the Bahr
s ed to Syria under their new leader, Baybars, and were to serve as mercenaries to various Ayyubid

princes until the

arrival of the Mongols in early 1260, when they returned to Egypt.
At the other end of the Islamic world, a similar development had taken place
not long before this one. In northern India another group of mamluks
had
seized power and created the so-called Sultanate of Dehli, which ruled from
1211 until the sixteenth century. Here, too, we have a parallel to Shajar alDurr, one who enjoyed a greater degree of success. This was Radiyya,

who
ruled the sultanate from 1236 to 1240. The establishment of two somewhat
similar regimes based on slave soldiers at more or less the same time warrants
a comment. Although the possibility of a coincidence cannot be ruled out, it
may be that a larger development in Eurasiathe Mongol expansionhad
its effect. Perhaps the highly unsettled conditions on the steppe that resulted
from Mongol conquests led to the ooding of the slave markets with raw
material for mamluk
units in the Islamic world, and thus the mamluk
institution became even more signicant than in the past. It is difcult, however, to
prove such a supposition, beyond the account by al-Nuwayr quoted above.
The parallel phenomenon of female sultans can also be noted. Neither was a
long-term success, if by success one means staying in power, but each was an
unusual occurrence in pre-modern Islamic history. As has been suggested,
it may be that the relatively high status ascribed to women in the TurcoMongolian tribal society in the Eurasian steppe may be an explanation, albeit
a partial one, for this development. In any event, although Turkish elements
had now decisively become the political elites in these two areas, bringing with
them new norms of gender relations, they were not able to overturn wellestablished perceptions and expectations of womens role in political affairs.
As interesting as are developments in the Indian subcontinent, our main
thread of inquiry concerns Egypt and the Levant, where we nd one of the
great achievements of slave soldiers in the Islamic countries. In the 1250s the
Mongols, led by Chinggis Khans grandson Hleg, renewed their offensive in
the Islamic world. Taking Baghdad in early 1258 and then ending the caliphate, they entered Syria about two years later. In the rst months of 1260 the

58

Reuven Amitai

Ayyubid

regime in Syria collapsed. One side effect of this development was the
return of Baybars to Egypt with his following of Bahr
mamluks.

The Franks
on the coast were not of one mind: those in Antioch threw in their lot with the
Mongols, like the Armenians of Cilicia, while those centered in Acre adopted a
more restrained attitude because of their apprehension. A division of the
Mongol army commanded by Kitbuqa was sent south from Aleppo and took
Damascus, which surrendered without resistance. Advanced Mongol forces
raided and reconnoitered as far south as Gaza and Jerusalem in Palestine, and
to the north of Karak in trans-Jordan. A contemporary observer would not
have been thought unreasonable if he or she had predicted the permanent
occupation of Syria by Mongols and their successful advance into Egypt.
Matters, however, were to turn out differently. Under the mamluk
ruler
Qutuz, who had risen to power at the end of 1259, preparations were being
made to meet the Mongols in Syria. Perhaps the most important reason for
this decision was the news that Hleg had withdrawn with the vast majority
of his troops, taking up a position in Azerbaijan. He had left only Ketbuqa and
his division in Syria, with instructions to keep an eye on the Franks and on the
rulers of Egypt. Reinforced by Baybars and his supporters, as well as by
Ayyubid

soldiers who had ed to Egypt, the mamluk

army set out for Syria in
mid-July. An advance Mongol force at Gaza was thrown back, and the Egyptian army advanced up the coast to Acre. Receiving supplies from the Franks
and an agreement guaranteeing their neutrality, the mamluks
moved into the
Jezreel Valley. They soon encountered the Mongols under Ketbuqa at their
position near Ayn Jal
ut
(The Well of Goliath), below the northern slopes of
the Gilboa hills. The armies met on the morning of 3 September 1260. The
ghting was touch and go for some time, but after several hours of battle, the
mamluks
were nally victorious, putting to ight the Mongols, who subsequently abandoned Syria.
A number of reasons offer themselves for the mamluks

victory: their determination and leadership, their slight numerical advantage, the eeing of Syrian Muslim troops enrolled in the Mongol army against their will, and just
plain luck (the death in battle of the Mongol commander). Perhaps, however,
the most decisive reason was the similarity of ghting methods of the mamluks

and the Mongols, due to their common origins in the steppes of Eurasia. This
similarity and its results were well expressed by a contemporary Syrian writer,
Abu Shama

(d. 1267), who wrote about this battle in his chronicle: Among
the amazing things is that the Tartars [=Mongols] were defeated and annihilated by members of their own race from among the Turks (min abna
jinshim
al-turk). To this assessment the author adds a short poem of his own composition: The Mongols conquered the land and there came to them / From Egypt

The Mamluk
Institution

59

a Turk, who sacriced his life. / In Syria he destroyed and scattered them. / To
everything there is a pest of its own kind ( jins). This resemblance in ghting
methods put the Mongols and the mamluks
on the same plane, so to speak,
and enabled the other reasons suggested above to come into play and decide
the battle.
The impact of the battle was multifold: rst, it ended Mongol rule in Syria
and contributed to puncturing the myth of their invincibility. Second, it provided crucial legitimacy to the edging mamluk
regime, which still suffered
from the way it had obtained power and the inghting that accompanied its
rst decade in power in Egypt. Finally, with the collapse of Ayyubid

rule in
Syria and the expulsion of the Mongols from the country, the mamluks
took
control, soon turning this land into an integral province of a highly centralized
state based in Cairo. The mamluk
leadership was aware that the Mongol
danger had not disappeared, and many of the activities and policies of the next
few decades should be understood in this context.

A Quarter of a Millennium of Mamluk

Rule
The mamluk
sultanate of Egypt and Syria crystallized in the midst of a
long-term war against the Mongols on one hand and the crusaders on the
other. It was a military state par excellence, much of whose ostensible raison
dtre was to defend Islam from these enemies. The political elite was unabashedly military, and in fact over the course of the next half-century a
number of important positions in the bureaucracy (such as that of the wazir,
with general responsibility for nancial administration) were increasingly
lled by representatives of the military, thereby weakening the traditional
bureaucratic class. The sultan was generally a member of the mamluk
military elite, although often as a stopgap measure a son of a sultan was appointed
as ruler until one of the important amrs (ofcers) triumphed over his opponents to gain the throne. No less important, the vast majority of the revenues
of the state, and in general the lions share of the agricultural surplus, were
destined for the mamluk
class, particularly the sultan and the senior amirs.
The mechanism for the transfer of these revenues was the iqfta
system, which
had been brought to Egypt by the Ayyubids

but had been further systemized

under the mamluks.

The military class remained urban: generally only at the

time of collecting the revenues did the mamluks
and their ofcials venture out
into the countryside.
The 270-year periods of mamluk
rule over Egypt and Syria have much in
common; contemporaries saw them as a unity, which they referred to as
dawlat al-turk (or al-atrak),

the dynasty of the Turks. We can, therefore,

60

Reuven Amitai

speak with condence of the Mamluk

Period. At the same time, we should be
aware that the Mamluk
Period was also many subperiods, each with its own
peculiar characteristics. Already in the time of the sultanate, contemporary
historians were aware of a general distinction between two eras. The rst,
stretching from 1250 to 1282, was the Turkish or Qipchaq Period, called
by some modern historians the Bahr
Period, because of the important role
of this unit and its graduates in the early sultanate. The proper name for the
second should be the Circassian Period, since Mamluks
of Circassian origin
made up the dominant element in the military elite; in fact, the mamluk

sources refer to this time as dawlat al-jarakis

(the Circassian dynasty). This

era, however, is still referred to by the modern misnomer the Burj dynasty, a
usage that should be eschewed by careful scholars and students. In any event,
the second half of the history of the mamluk
state is indeed a discrete block of
time, distinct in many ways from the earlier sultanate.
In fact, the history of the sultanate can be further broken down into smaller
subperiods. After the turbulent decade of 12501260, described above, one
can speak of a heroic period, lasting from 1260 to 1293. This was a period
of intensive warfare against both the Mongols and the Franks, when the army
was strengthened in numbers and quality, and along with it, the state in general went through a process of institutionalization. The dominant personality
for this subperiod was the sultan Baybars, who reigned from 1260 to 1277,
having murdered Qutuz soon after the victory at Ayn Jal
ut.
In many ways one
can see this fascinating but cruel personality as the real founder of the Sultanate; besides laying down the foundations of the sultanates institutions, he was
frequently campaigning in Syria against its enemies. After a two-year hiatus in
which his two sons briey ruled, he was succeeded by his comrade from the
Bahriyya,

Qalawun, who continued his policies until his death in 1290. The
latter was succeeded by his own son, al-Malik al-Ashraf Khall, who completed the work of his two illustrious predecessors by conquering Acre in
1291, thus bringing the crusading kingdom to an end. In spite of his obvious
abilities, let alone his militancy toward the enemies of the sultanate, Mongols
as well as crusaders, al-Ashraf was assassinated in 1293 by a group of his
fathers mamluks
who were unhappy with his policies. In his place they set
on the throne his younger brother, al-Malik al-Na
sir Muhammad,

then nine
years old. This was the typical succession paradigm repeating itself: the
mamluks
of the previous sultan could not abide the existence of a strong
successor and so eliminated him, replacing him with a boy-sultan who could
be easily manipulated until such time as one of the senior mamluk
ofcers
could take control in name as well as in fact.
The next seventeen years formed an interesting interregnum, which Robert

The Mamluk
Institution

61

Irwin has referred to as the operation of faction. Twice, al-Na

sir Muham
mad sat on the throne in name only (12931294 and 12981309), increasingly chang under the tutelage of the senior ofcers. From 1294 to 1299, two
of these commanders took the sultanate, and again in 13091310 there was
another short-term sultan. None of these rulers, however, were able to rule
with any success, particularly given the opposition of a large section of the
ofcer class. Finally, in 1310, al-Na
sir Muhammad

was able to stage a comeback from his exile in Karak in trans-Jordan. He then ruled with a heavy hand,
having learnt the lessons of his youth: during the rst years of his reign, he
succeeded in eliminating the large group of ofcers who had been mamluks
of
his father, Qalawun. His thirty-year reign is fascinating for several reasons,
among them the end of the Mamluk-Ilkhanid

war, ca. 1320, and the boom in

construction, urban and rural. It was, so it would seem, a period of peace and
unbridled prosperity. Some scholars, however, have noted that in many ways it
was at this time that the seeds for the subsequent decline were sown. This is a
topic that goes beyond the connes of the present chapter, so I will limit myself
to one aspect: the way the mamluk
system was deliberately changed at this
time. Al-Maqrz writes:
Al-Na
sir imported many mamluks
and slave-girls. He called the merchants
[to come] to him, and paid them money, describing to them the beauty of
mamluks
and slave-girls [that he desired]. He sent them off to the country of
zbeg (i.e., the Mongol Golden Horde), to Tabriz, Anatolia, Baghdad and
elsewhere. When a merchant brought him a batch of mamluks,

he gave him a
large sum for them. From the beginning, he bestowed upon the mamluks

splendid clothes, golden belts, horses and gifts in order to impress them. This
was not the custom of those kings before him. When a mamluk
was brought
to them, they ascertained his ethnic group, then they handed him over to
the commanding eunuch, and attached him to [the members of ] his ethnic
group. He was educated with a faqh (legal scholar), who taught him manners, proper behaviour and respect. He was trained in using the bow and
arrow, lance-play, riding the horse and types of horsemanship. His costume
was from Baalbeki cotton cloth, and medium weight ax cloth. The mamluks

pay was increased from three dinars to ve to seven to ten. When he joined the
ranks, he held an appropriate position or positions, learning there what was
necessary from proper behaviour when he was young. Then the mamluk
was
gradually promoted. When the mamluk
reached an important position and a
high rank, he knew its value.

We rst learn from this passage important information about the traditional
method of educating young mamluks
and what was expected of them when
they nished the military school and were enrolled in regular units. Although

62

Reuven Amitai

perhaps the author may be accused of exaggeration, for which he has a certain
penchant, it is clear that some basic tinkering with the way mamluks
were
educated had now taken place. In the earlier period, the education of the
mamluk
was centered on inculcating frugality and slow promotion based
mainly on the systematic acquisition of skills and proven ability. The education of the young mamluk
trainee was a combination of religious and military
training. Loyalty toward the patron (ustadh)

and other mamluks

of the same
patron (khushdash,

plural khushdashiyya)

was inculcated. Even after ofcial

manumission at around the age of twenty or younger, at the ceremony known
as kharj, where the trainees received a certicate of release (itaqa),

the soldiers
still proudly regarded themselves as mamluks,

jealously guarding their status

and maintainingat least theoreticallytheir group solidarity and loyalty to
their patron.
But under al-Na
sir Muhammadit

is claimedthe young mamluk

had all
kinds of luxuries showered upon him, and favorites enjoyed rapid advancement up the ranks to the highest positions. It is unclear, however, how deep
this change went, and what all of its long-term implications were. One thing is
obvious, though: with the end of the sixty-year war with the Mongols (thirty
years after the expulsion of the crusaders), the leadership of the sultanate
could now indulge with relative impunity in experiments with the system that
had served it well in the past. The political troubles of the subsequent decades
may be explained in part by this changing educational policy and the effect it
had on discipline of the troops.
The forty-one-year period after the death of al-Na
sir Muhammad

was one
of general political anarchy and economic crisis, both exacerbated by the
outbreak of bubonic plague in 1348 in Egypt and Syria. A series of twelve
sultans, sons and grandsons (and one great grandson) of the great sultan, was
placed on the throne and then removed when it suited the grandees. The one
A
exception was al-Na
sir Hasan,
who reigned twice (13471351, 13541358);
he made an attempt to assert his authority vis--vis the ofcers and suffered
deposition and death as a result.
Stability was reestablished with the accession of Barquq, an ofcer of Circassian origin, in 1382. From this time the Circassians became the dominant
element in the military society, although not necessarily because they enjoyed a
numerical majority. In fact, Qipchaq Turkish remained the lingua franca of the
mamluks,

and paradoxically it was during the second half of the Mamluk

Sultanate that most works in this language were composed. Barquqs rise was
accompanied by the strengthening of the Circassians in the mid-fourteenth
century; the combination of the growing Islamization of the Turkish population of the Qipchaq steppe north of the Black Sea, a possible reduction of the

The Mamluk
Institution

63

population available for export as military slaves, and general disorders in

the Golden Horde appears to have led to the growing interest of the Circassians, a warlike mountain people from the northern Caucasus region. There
had been Circassian mamluks
from the inception of the sultanate, and under
Qalawun they had already reached a certain prominence with the formation of
the Burjiyya regiment, numbering several thousand. One of their number,
Baybars al-Jashnak

r, even reigned from 13091310, after a decade as one of

the two strongmen of the regime.
The Circassian Period is generally seen as one of economic decline, political
instability, and military weakness. There is much to commend this view, although modern historians have been perhaps overinuenced by the contemporary authors, who frequently compare their own time unfavorably to a
somewhat mythical golden age. Revisionism, however, can also be exaggerated: the armies of the sultans were smaller and generally less efcient, and the
state suffered chronic shortages of revenue. This may have prompted one
sultan in particular, Barsbay (14221438), to establish state monopolies of
various branches of the economy, particularly foreign trade, with long-term
negative effects. An ongoing problem was the discipline of the young mamluks,

who frequently rioted in the streets when their salaries were in arrears. It
was often difcult to get the royal mamluks
to go out on campaigns, although
this may have been an excuse to get problematic ofcers or mamluks
of the
former sultans out of the capital and perhaps to put them in harms way.
The combination of endemic monetary crisis brought on by the prodigious
spending of al-Na
sir Muhammads

reign, the Black Death, and the expensive

nature of the mamluk
institution resulted in a decline in military power. Financial constraints led to smaller armies, and mamluks
tended to be imported at
an older age, meaning that they received a shorter and inferior military education. This reduced period of training also resulted in a decline of discipline,
which brought about a further weakening of the armys prowess, on one hand,
and constant economic demands (often expressed in rioting), on the other.
Given this somewhat sorry state, it is surprising that the mamluk
state lasted as
long as it did. Two explanations for this longevity, in spite of increasing problems, present themselves: there was no local element that seriously endangered
mamluk
rule, and until the end of the fteenth century, no foreign power,
except for the short-term invasion of Tamerlane, signicantly threatened
the sultanate from the outside.
The last two important sultans tried to deal with this decline in different
ways. The crisis took on a new slant with the rise of the Ottomans, who were
steadily encroaching on the mamluk
sphere of inuence in southeastern Anatolia. The rst approach was one of entrenchment by Qaitbay (14681496), a

64

Reuven Amitai

powerful but deeply conservative ruler. His answer to the dangers facing the
sultanate and the mamluk
class was a return to older virtues of training and
discipline. Horsemanship and the use of the bow and arrow were stressed.
There was little room for the new gunpowder weapons. His policy seemed to
be vindicated with the mamluk
victory over the Ottomans at Kayseri in 1490,
as in other warfare in the frontier region against this enemy. It should be borne
in mind, however, that the mamluk
victory was the result of an all-out effort
on their part, while facing them was only a part of Ottoman might.
Qansuh al-Ghawr (14911516) appears to have taken a somewhat different tack: while not neglecting traditional mamluk
methods, he permitted a
bit more experimentation with gunpowder weapons, both artillery and handguns. The former may have been a result of the appearance of the Portuguese
in the Indian Ocean and the threat to mamluk
commercial interests in the
region. There was even some cooperation with the Ottomans on this front. In
any event, there was no major breakthrough in this area: the development of
gunpowder weapons still had not become a major priority of the mamluk
elite.
Perhaps no less important, although possibly not clear to most contemporaries, Qansuh spent much of his energy putting together a private sc based
on an enormous waqf (endowment) that he assembled through various legal
machinations. This appears to have been a way to circumvent the traditional
iqta
system, thus weakening the various mamluk
grandees. It is a speculative
suggestion, but perhaps he pondered a way to reduce or at least supplement
the mamluk
units, using this private sc as a nancial basis.
Whatever Qansuhs long-term plans, they were cut short by his defeat by the
Ottoman sultan Selim I at the battle of Marj Dabiq

in northern Syria in 1516.

A number of factors combined to bring this result, rst of which was the larger
and better-disciplined Ottoman army. Treachery in the mamluk
ranks played
its part, too. An additional factor whose exact importance is difcult to gauge
was the mamluks

lack of gunpowder weapons, be they eld artillery or handguns; the Ottomans used these to some effect. The refusal or perhaps inability
of the mamluks
to modernize their army was to have disastrous effects. Yet
this policy is understandable in the context of this military society. One might
speak of a general tendency discernable among horsemen to disregard or
disparage technological changes (this, of course, is a statement that needs
proof, but the story of the Polish cavalry at the commencement of World War
II comes to mind), but more concrete reasons can be suggested: the handguns
of the time would have required those who used them to dismount. From the
point of view of members of the mamluk
class, this completely negated their
self-perceived raison dtre: anyone could use a handgun, but only a mamluk

could properly ride and use a bow and arrow. The mamluks
understood that

The Mamluk
Institution

65

by adopting handguns at that time they would have lost their military monopoly and by extension their right to rule. In other words, what made sense
perhaps from a military perspective negated the political logic of the Mamluk

Sultanate. They had no choice, or so they believed, but to maintain the good
old ways and to hope for the best.
The mamluk
system, based on the import of excellent raw material for
military purposes and training the recruits in horsemanship and archery, had
been the answer par excellence to the dangers posed by the crusaders and the
Mongols to much of the Islamic world in the thirteenth century. A quarter of a
millennium later, they were technologically out of date and unable to do much
about it. The defeat of the mamluks
by the Ottomans at Cairo in 1517, in spite
of the frantic efforts made to acquire artillery, was merely the coup de grce to
a system that had long since lost its efciency and was no longer able to defend
itself.

Vestigial Remnants and Variants of the Mamluk

System
Two important variants of military slavery were to outlive the demise of
the Mamluk
Sultanate. The rst was in Egypt and Syria. After the battle, the
Ottomans left senior mamluk
ofcers in place as governors in Syria and Egypt,
supported by surviving mamluks.

This experiment was short-lived in Syria

because the mamluks
there revolted in 1520, in the aftermath of Selims death.
The revolt was soon put down and the mamluks
eradicated there. In Egypt,
mamluks
remained an important component of the local elite, although their
prominence gradually declined. The eighteenth century saw a resurgence of
the power of mamluk
households, and they became dominant in the country,
albeit still accepting Ottoman suzerainty. This later phase has been called the
neo-mamluk
system, because it is somewhat different from the prototype of
the sultanate: sons of mamluks
joined the military elite, as did other nonmamluk
household members. In addition, the mamluks
had nally adopted
handguns. Technological advances had produced the carbine and the pistol,
which could be wielded on horseback. This Indian Summer of mamlukdom,

however, was ended at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the all-butindependent Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad

Al, who brutally supressed the mamluk

grandees.
The second variant, preceding the demise of the sultanate, was the so-called
janissary ([ Yeni Cheri, new army) system of the Ottoman Empire. The
origins of this institution are somewhat obscure, but in the late fourteenth and
early fteenth centuries, units of slave soldiers emerged as an integral, perhaps a primary, part of the conquering Ottoman army. The janissaries were

66

Reuven Amitai

different from the regular mamluk

model for two reasons: rst, they fought as
infantrymen, and second, instead of being taken from pagan Turkish or Caucasian tribes, they were mainly drafted from the Christian population of the
Balkans. That the elite corps of the Ottoman army consisted of infantry who
rst fought as foot archers made the transition to handguns relatively easy: it
did not require a major conceptual shift to put down the bow and pick up a
predecessor of the musket, as unwieldy as it might be. The history of the
janissaries is beyond the scope of the present chapter, but their role in Ottoman expansion, in Europe and in the Middle East (and in later Ottoman
history up to their nal disbandment in 1833), was signicant. It was a version of the mamluk
system that had been adopted to the changing circumstances of warfare.
What can be termed vestigial examples of military slavery are found in
different parts of the Islamic world in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries. In Morocco, for example, black military slavery had become signicant after the expansion to the south at the end of the seventeenth century, and a
large corps was organized and maintained until the mid-eighteenth century.
At around the same time, units of black slave soldiers were organized in what
today is Sudan and the surrounding countries, taking advantage of the availability of slaves in the region (building on a thousand-year tradition of the slave
trade from this area to the north). These formations played an important role in
the Egyptian wars of expansion into the region as well as the Mahdist resistance. Descendants of these military slaves made up a considerable component of the military in East Africa during much of the twentieth century.

The Importance of the Mamluk

System
The mamluk
institution provided a bulwark of the Islamic word against
invaders and, at the same time, contributed to Islamic expansion. It harnessed
the military capabilities of the steppe peoples and their neighbors, mainly the
Turks, for generations, constantly bringing in fresh recruits and preventing the
loss of military capabilities due to exposure to civilized life. The system of
military slavery in the Islamic world, particularly as it reached its apotheosis in
the Mamluk
Sultanate, enabled the ongoing exploitation of the military advantages of the peoples of the Eurasian steppe even after the debilitating effects of long-term exposure to sedentary culture. A clear statement of this
was expressed by the great North African historian and thinker Ibn Khaldun

(d. 1406), who spent the last years of his life in the Mamluk
Sultanate and
could see its workings at rst hand. In a concise tour dhorizon of the history
of the institution of military slavery in Islam he writes:

The Mamluk
Institution

67

When the [Abbasid]

state was drowned in decadence and luxury and donned

the garments of calamity and impotence and was overthrown by the heathen
Mongols, who abolished the seat of the Caliphate and obliterated the splendor of the lands and made unbelief prevail in place of belief, because the
people of the faith, sunk in self-indulgence, preoccupied with pleasure and
abandoned to luxury, had become decient in energy and courage and the
emblem of manhoodthen, it was Gods benevolence that He rescued the
faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslim in
Egypt, preserving the order and defending the walls of Islam. He did this by
sending to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation and from among its great
and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, who
were brought from the House of War (i.e., the non-Muslim world) to the
House of Islam (i.e., the Muslim countries) under the rule of slavery, which
hides in itself a divine blessing, and is exposed to divine providence; cured by
slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the rm resolve of true believers
and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with
the lth of pleasure, undeled by the ways of civilized living, and with their
ardor unbroken by the profusion of luxury. The slave merchants bring them
to Egypt in batches, like sand-grouse to the watering places, and government
buyers have them displayed for inspection and bid for them, raising the price
above their value. They do this not in order to subjugate them, but because it
intensies loyalty, increases power, and is conducive to ardent zeal. They
choose from each group, according to what they observe of the characteristics
of the race and the tribes. Then they place them in government barracks
where they give good and fair treatment, educate them, have them taught the
Quran
and kept at their religious studies until they have a rm grasp of this.
Then they train them in archery and fencing, in horsemanship, in hippodromes, and in thrusting with the lance and striking with the sword until their
arms grow strong and their skills become rmly rooted. When the masters
know that they have reached the point when they are ready to defend them,
even to die for them, they double their pay and increase their grants (iqta),

and impose on them the duty to improve themselves in the use of weapons and
in horsemanship, and so also to increase the number of men of their own race
in the service for that purpose. Often they use them in the service of the state,
appoint them to high state ofces, and some of them are chosen to sit on the
throne of the sultans and direct the affairs of the Muslims, in accordance with
divine providence and with the mercy of God to His creatures. Thus, one
intake comes after another and generation follows generation, and Islam
rejoices in the benet which it gains through them, and the branches of the
kingdom ourish with the freshness of youth.

This unequivocal passage by a perspicacious Muslim thinker indicates that a

positive view toward the phenomenon of military slavery was not unknown in

68

Reuven Amitai

the medieval Islamic world. It also suggests that mamluksat

least during the

time of the Mamluk
Sultanatewere held in high esteem, in spite of their
humble origins and slave status during their youth. This would appear to belie
somewhat the suggestion of Orlando Patterson that social death was also
the status of the military slave of the Islamic world. Granted, and perhaps
tellingly, most of Pattersons discussion deals with the early period of the
ghilman,
with some reference to the Ottoman devshirme. There is no discussion of the sultanate. For the earlier period, he suggests that it was the lack of
honor, prestige, or position (in other words, social death) that prompted the
caliphs to prefer Turkish mamluks
to free aliens or to fellow Arabs. The low
prestige of the slave was indeed a factor, although others have been adduced
above. In any event, over the centuries, at least some Muslim military slaves
evolved into a military and social elite, jealous of their privileges vis--vis the
general population and even their own progeny. Their self-image is clearly
perceived by anyone who walks the streets of old Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo,
and even Jerusalem and sees the monumental schools, mosques, su lodges,
and caravansarais, let alone fortications that were constructed under their
patronage. Whatever the exact plans of the initiator of this institution in the
early ninth century, by the late middle ages, Turkish ofcers of slave origin saw
themselves as the legitimate Muslim rulers, and the local population had no
choice but to acquiesce. We see little sign of abasement and should therefore be
wary of applying in a blanket way the insights derived from slavery in general
to this particular variant.

Notes
1. There are excellent surveys by D. Sourdel, C. E. Bosworth, P. Hardy, and I. Inalcik
on the ghulam
(military slave) in the caliphate, Persia, India, and the Ottoman Empire in
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 11602002), 2:107991, as well as D.
Ayalons article Mamluk,

in ibid., 6:314321. The term mamluk

(plural mamal
k)
literally means owned or purchased but is used almost exclusively to mean a white
military slave, although on occasion it is used by a writer to describe himself, i.e., to
indicate how humble he is by calling himself a slave. The use in this chapter of mamluk
to
describe military slaves at this early stage is somewhat anachronistic, since the usual term
for this category in the rst centuries is ghulam
(plural ghilman),

which literally means

youth (cf. the Hebrew elem).
2. For rst attempts at evaluating Ayalons mamluk
project, see R. Amitai, The Rise
and Fall of the Mamluk
Institution: A Summary of David Ayalons Works, in Moshe
Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David
Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1986), 1930; Amitai, David Ayalon, 19141998, Mamluk Studies Review 3 (1999): 14.

The Mamluk
Institution

69

3. Jrgen Paul, The State and the Military: The Samanid Case, Papers on Inner
Asia, no. 26 (Bloomington, 1994), 45.
4. David Turley, Slavery (Oxford, 2000); M. L. Bush (ed.), Serfdom and Slavery:
Studies in Legal Bondage (London, 1996) writes on p. 5: Certain Islamic societies,
notably the Ottoman Turks, operated a system of state slavery whereby the rulers army
was manned by men legally dened as slaves. This is true, but of course it ignores the
major role of military slaves before the Ottomans. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social
Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 308314, has some interesting
insights into the Islamic Ghilman,

to which I return below.

5. On legal and social aspects of slavery in Islam, see R. Brunschvig, Abd, in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1:2440. See the larger discussion in B. Lewis, Race and Slavery
in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York, 1990); in chapter 9 (Slaves in
Arms) there is a useful overview of military slavery in Islamic history.
6. The view expressed here is at variance with those presented by Patricia Crone
(Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity [Cambridge, UK, 1980]) and
Daniel Pipes (Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System [New Haven,
1981]), which attribute much importance to the retreat from political affairs by Muslim
elites in early Islamic society, thereby leaving the arena open to various military types.
Muslim elites did not voluntarily withdraw from affairs because of a distaste for political
reality but rather were shunted aside from military activity, often forcibly, by the ruling
circles, who replaced them with troops from the periphery, including eventually Turkish
slave troops. It appears to me that no one bothered to ask the traditional religious and
social elites whether they wanted to be part of the new scheme of things.
7. For the early Islamic armies, see Claude Cahen, Djaysh, I. Classical, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:504505; G. P. Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam: The Unmayyad
Caliphate, a.d. 661750 (London, 1986); Hugh Kennedy, The Armies of the Caliphs
(London, 2000), 158; C. E. Bosworth, Armies of the Prophet: Strategy, Tactics and
Weapons, in Bernard Lewis (ed.), The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture (London,
1976), 201204.
8. This important area in medieval Islamic history includes modern-day Turkmenistan, northeastern Iran, and northern Afghanistan.
9. Moshe Sharon, Black Banners from the East: The Establishment of the Abbasid
StateIncubation of a Revolt (Jerusalem, 1983), 4971; Sharon, Revolt: The Social and
Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution (Jerusalem, 1990), 297.
10. Moshe Sharon, The Military Reforms of Abu Muslim, Their Background and
Consequences, in M. Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Prof. David Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1986), 117121.
11. For the Abna,
see Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The
Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (London, 1986), 135, 14352;
Matthew S. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish
Military of Samarra, a.h. 200275/815889 ce (Albany, 2001), passim. An extremely
important study of the Abna
is the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by Amikam Elad,
Characteristics of the Development of the Abbasid

Army (especially Ahl Khuras

an

and al-Abna
Units), with Emphasis on the Reign of al-Amn and al-Mamun
(Hebrew

70

Reuven Amitai

University of Jerusalem, 1986). Unfortunately, this work, with the exception of an abstract, remains in Hebrew and is thus inaccessible to most scholars.
12. David Ayalon, The Military Reforms of Caliph al-Mutasim: Their Background
and Consequences, in D. Ayalon, Islam and the Abode of War (Aldershot, 1994), art. I.
13. David Ayalon, Preliminary Remarks on the Mamluk Military Institution in Islam, in V. J. Perry and M. E. Yapp (eds.), War, Technology and Society in the Middle
East (London, 1975), 48 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, The Mamluk Military Society: Collected Studies [London, 1979], art. IX).
14. On mawal
, mostly in the general sense of a convert to Islam, see Patricia Crone,
Mawla,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 6:874882. For the restricted sense of imported
mawal
, see David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study of Power Relationships (Jerusalem, 1999), 2434.
15. Ayalon, Preliminary Remarks, 50. I might note that Patterson, Slavery and
Social Death, 309311, lumps imported mawal
together with military slaves. Granted,
the line between them appears at times to be blurred at this stage (the early Abbasid

period), but on the whole the rst group appears to have been composed of former
prisoners of war and freedmen of sundry origin, and as an institution it appears distinct
from the full-blown military slavery discernable from ca. 810 onward.
A
16. Abu Jafar Muhammad

b. Jarr al-Tabar
, Tarkh al-rusul
wal-muluk,
ed. M. J. de
Goeje et al. (Leiden, 18711901), 3:853854; translation from Ayalon, Preliminary
Remarks, 49; see also The History of al-Tabar, vol. 31; The War Between Brothers, tr.
Michael Fishbein (Albany, 1992), 116117.
17. A detailed rendition of the formation of al-Mutasims slave regiment is found in
Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 150; see also the brief account in Hugh
Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History (London, 1981), 167.
18. See the article by Brunshvig, note 5 above.
19. Kennedy, Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 15960.
20. See note 1 for discussion of the term mamluk.

21. The slave status of these Turkish guard-soldiers is dealt with in detail in the introduction and rst chapter of Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, esp. 3426.
22. On the earlier history of the Turks and rst encounters with the Muslims, see
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and
State-formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden,
1992), chaps. 16, 8. For a suggestion of an earlier and more massive presence in what
became the eastern Islamic world, see Richard N. Frye and Aydin M. Sayili, Turks in the
Middle East Before the Saljuqs, Journal of the American Oriental Society 63 (1943):
194207.
23. Ayalon, Preliminary Remarks, 47, citing Ahmad

b. Yahy
a al-Baladhur

, Futu hf
al-buldan
(=Liber Expugnationis Regionum), ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 186366),
376, 410441. In D. Ayalon, Aspects of the Mamluk Phenomenon: The Importance of
the Mamluk Institution, Der Islam 56 (1976): 205 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, The Mamluk
Military Society [London 1979], art. Xa), we are provided with some early uses of the
term mamluk,
even in the Umayyad period, but it is far from clear to my mind whether
they are Turks and what exactly is meant by the term in these contexts.

The Mamluk
Institution

71

24. People of the Book (ahl al-kitab),

i.e., Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, could
only be enslaved under certain conditions.
25. This is a point made by Ayalon (Aspects of the Mamluk Phenomenon, 203),
although perhaps an overstated one. Nomadic populations by nature live in a somewhat
dispersed state. In any case, the number of male slaves that were available appears to have
been fairly high. See below for discussion of poverty as a factor in the selling of offspring
in the steppe.
26. For the military abilities of the Eurasian nomads in general and the Turks in
particular, see the important recent article by Peter B. Golden, War and Warfare in the
Pre-Cinggisid Western Steppes of Eurasia, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner
Asian History, 5001800 (Leiden, 2002), 105172, as well as the editors comments in
the introduction, pp. 112. For relations between the nomads and the sedentary states
surrounding them, see A. M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, 2nd ed. (Madison, 1994).
27. Abu Ish aq
Ibrah
m b. Muhammad

al-Istakhr, al-Masalik

wal-mamalik

(Leiden,
1927), 291; translation in D. Ayalon, The Mamluks
of the Seljuks: Islams Military
Might at the Crossroads, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 6 (1996): 311.
28. Al-Ja hi
z (Abu Uthman
Amr b. Bahr), Manaqib

al-atraq,
in Tria Opuscula Auctore, ed. G. van Vloten (Leiden, 1903), 49; translation in Ayalon, Mamluks
of the
Seljuks, 311.
A
29. Abu al-Qasim

Ibn Hawqal
al-Nasb, Kitab
sf urat

al-ard,
f ed. J. H. Kramers (Leiden, 193839), 452; translation in Ayalon, Mamluks
of the Seljuks, 312.
30. See David Ayalon, Lesclavage du mamelouk (Jerusalem, 1951). Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 2123, comments on the lack of information on the education
of the Turkish guardsmen. See below on the training of mounted archers.
31. M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation (Cambridge, UK, 1976),
6365.
32. Christopher I. Beckwith, Aspects of the Early History of the Central Asian Guard
Corps in Islam, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4 (1984): 2943.
33. Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 8. Gordons book is the rst monograph
in English that deals in detail with the formation and early history of the Turkish guard
corps composed of military slaves, putting the study of the subject on a very sound
footing.
34. Ibid., 4774.
35. John M. Smith Jr., Archeology and Mounted Archery: Scythian and Sassanian
Shots, and the Samarra Racetrack, paper delivered at the International Conference on
Military Archaeology: Weaponry and Warfare in Historical and Social Perspective, at the
State Hermitage and the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian
Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1998. This important paper will perhaps see the
light of day in the near future, in a volume on military archeology that has been announced. I am grateful to Prof. Smith for providing me with a draft of this paper.
36. Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans. For the matter of homosexuality among
the military slaves, see the comment by C. E. Bosworth, Ghulam,

Encyclopaedia of
Islam, 2:1082.

72

Reuven Amitai

A
37. Yaqut
al-Rum
al-Hamaw
, Mu jam al-buldan
(=Jacuts geographiches Wrterbuch), ed. F. Wstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866), 1:839. The translation is taken with slight
changes from D. Ayalon, The Mamluk
Novice (on His Youthfulness and on His Original
Religion), Revue des tudes islamiques 54 (1986), 23 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, Islam
and the Abode of War [Aldershot, 1994], art. VI).
38. Al-Yaqub
(Ahmad

b. Ab Ya qub),

Kitab
al-Buldan,
ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden,
1892), 258259; translation in D. Ayalon, The Muslim City and the Mamluk Military
Aristocracy, Proceedings of the Israeli Academy of Sciences 2 (1968), 317318 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, Studies on the Mamluks
of Egypt, 12501517 [London, 1977], art.
VII). See also Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 58, 6263.
39. Abd al-Rahm
an
b. Muhammad

Ibn Khaldun,
Kitab
al-Ibar (Bulaq, 1284/1867),
5:371; translation from B. Lewis (ed. and tr.), Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the
Capture of Constantinople (New York, 1974), 1:9899.
40. Later, in the Mamluk
Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, the sons of mamluks
were
known as awlad
al-nas
(sons of the people [who count]). For more on them, see D.
Ayalon, Awlad
al-Nas,

Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1:765.

41. On this individual and the state that he built, see T. Bianquis, Autonomous
A ulun
Egypt from Ibu T
to Kaf
ur,
868969, in C. Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History
of Egypt, vol. 1, Islamic Egypt, 6401517 (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 86108; Gordon,
Breaking of a Thousand Swords, passim.
42. Most of our information about this factional conict, or rather the conict between units of former rulers and the latest successor, who may have been a descendant of
one of the previous rulers, is taken from the time of the mamluk
sultanate. See the studies
of D. Ayalon, Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 15 (1953), 208210, 218220; R. Irwin, Factions in
Medieval Egypt, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1986, 228246. It appears that a
similar dynamic occurred in mid-ninth-century Baghdad also. See below.
43. For these events, see Kennedy, Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 166171;
Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 7590.
44. The best survey in English of this eighty-year period of instability is Kennedy,
Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 171199; on pp. 206208 there is a discussion of
these mamluk-freebooter

units. As far as I am aware there is no monograph devoted to

this interesting and important middle Abbasid

period.
45. Kennedy, Armies of the Caliphs, 120121.
46. Paul, State and the Military, 1033.
47. See the general discussion in C. E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in
Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 9941040 (Edinburgh, 1963).
48. The literal meaning of the name Turcoman ([ Ar. Turkman
[ Tu. Trkmen) is
unclear, but its intention leaves no questions: they were members of Turkish tribal groups
(mostly of the Oghuz peoples) who entered the Islamic world, were Muslims, and maintained their nomadic, pastoral way of life. For a short discussion of the etymology of the
name, see P. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, 212213.
49. The whole matter of the conversion of the Turkish tribes in the part of the Eurasian
steppes that was near the Islamic world remains cloudy; see ibid., 211213.
50. For the early history of the Seljuqs, see D. O. Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040

The Mamluk
Institution

73

1796 (London, 1988), 2540; C. E. Bosworth, The Political and Dynastic History of the
Iranian World, in Cambridge History of Iran, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, UK, 1968),
5:1102.
51. In the Middle Ages, this term referred to much of the area south of the Caucasus
Mountains, including a chunk of modern-day eastern Turkey, and northwestern Iran; in
any event, it is a much larger region than indicated by the modern state of Azerbaijan.
52. Besides the studies cited in note 50, see C. Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, tr. J.
Jones-Williams (London, 1968), 1940, 6672.
53. See Morgan, Medieval Persia, 29; A. K. S. Lambton, The Internal Structure of the
Saljuq Empire, in Cambridge History of Iran, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, UK, 1968),
5:229230. Even these gures may be inated. See the evidence presented below for the
gures presented regarding the numbers of mamluk
soldiers at the battle of Manzikert.
A
A us), Siyar al-muluk
54. Nizam
al-Mulk (Abu Al b. Hasan
T
(=Siyasat-n

amah),

ed. H.
Darke (Tehran, 1962), 131; translation taken, with some changes, from H. Darke, The
Book of Government, or Rules for Kings, 2nd ed. (London, 1978), 102. Darke mistranslates the term ghulam
as page, when it clearly meant military slave, i.e., mamluk.

Nizam
al-Mulk himself was probably mistaken when he stated that the mamluks
were
taken from among the Turcoman tribes; this point is worth pursuing in future research.
55. C. Cahen, Ik
ta,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3:10881091; Cahen, Lvolution de
liqta
du IXe au XIIIe sicle: Contribution une histoire compare des socits mdivales, Annales: Economies, Socits, Civilisations 8 (1953): 2552. For the antecedents
of this system, see Gordon, Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 118127. See also my
Turko-Mongolian Nomads and the Iqta
System in the Islamic Middle East (ca. 1000
1500), in A. M. Khazanov and A. Wink, Nomads in the Sedentary World (London,
2001), 151171.
56. Sibt ibn al-Jawz, Mirat
al-zaman
(Ankara, 1968), 147152, cited in D. Ayalon,
From Ayyubids

to Mamluks,

Revue des tudes islamiques 49 (1981): 44 (reprinted in

D. Ayalon, Islam and the Abode of War [Aldershot, 1994], art. III).
57. C. Hillenbrand, Malazgird.

2. The Battle. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 6:243244;

R. Amitai-Preiss, Manzikert, in J. B. Friedman and K. Mossler Figg (eds.), Trade,
Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia (New York, 2000), 362
363; Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, 2630.
58. There is, of course, a large literature on the Crusades. For some relatively recent
research on the so-called rst crusade, see J. Phillips (ed.), The First Crusade: Origins and
Impact (Manchester, UK, 1997).
59. On these matters see E. Sivan, LIslam et la Croisade: Idologie et propagande
dans les reactions musulmanes aux Croisades (Paris, 1968).
60. These events are well surveyed by P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades: The Near
East from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (London, 1986), 3845.
61. For a survey of events, see ibid., 4659. For the importance of Turks, mainly
mamluks,

in the early Ayyubid

army, see D. Ayalon, Aspects of the Mamluk

Phenomenon. B. Ayyubids,

Kurds and Turks, Der Islam 54 (1977): 132 (reprinted in D. Ayalon,

The Mamluk
Military Society [London, 1979], art. Xb); H. A. R. Gibb, The Armies of
Saladin, in Ayalon, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, ed. S. J. Shaw and W. R. Polk
(Boston, 1962), 7490.

74

Reuven Amitai

62. D. S. Richards, al-Malik al-SA ali

h Najm al-Dn Ayyub,

Encyclopaedia of Islam,
8:988a989b. Note that al-SA ali
h Ayyubs

predilection for large mamluk

formations was
already evident during the time of his father, al-Kamil,

and thus incurred the latters

wrath for showing too much independence.
63. Literally: He made them the majority of his army.
64. Taq al-Dn Ahmad

b. Alf al-Maqrz, Kitab

al-suluk
li-marifat duwal al-muluk,

ed. M. M. Ziyada
et al. (Cairo, 193473), 1:339340.
65. The Qipchaqs were known as Cumans and Polovtzi in the West. See G. Hazai,
Kipcak, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 5:125b126b.
66. Shihab
al-Dn Ahmad

b. Abd al-Wahhab
al-Nuwayr, Nihayat al-arab f funun
aladab (Cairo, 1992), 29:417. For other sources and modern studies that discuss this
matter, see R. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-I lkhanid

War, 1260
1281 (Cambridge, UK, 1995), 18 and n. 63.
67. This was a smaller elite mamluk
unit, established by al-SA ali
h Ayyub.
Incidentally,
there is a mistake in the above rendition: the unit of knights that reached the city was led
not by King Louis IX but by his brother, Robert of Artois.
68. This was, of course, the future Sultan Baybars (r. 12601277), with all of his presultanic sobriquets.
69. Na
sir al-Dn Abd al-Rahm
an
b. Muhammad

Ibn al-Furat,
Ayyubids, Mamlukes
and Crusaders: Selections from the Tarkh al-Duwal wa l-Muluk
of Ibn al-Furat,
tr. U.
and M. C. Lyons; intro. and notes by J. S. C. Riley-Smith (Cambridge, UK, 1971), 1:27
28 (Arabic text), 2:2223 (translation). The reader may note the rhyme at the end (turk/
shirk).
70. For a good description of these events, see P. Thorau, The Lion of Egypt: Sultan
Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, tr. P. M. Holt (London, 1992),
3336.
71. Ibid., 3640; Amalia Levanoni, The Mamluks Ascent to Power in Egypt, Studia
Islamica 72 (1990): 121144.
72. On these events see R. Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early
Mamluk Sultanate, 12501382 (London, 1986), 2129; R. S. Humphreys, From Saladin
to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 11921260 (Albany, 1977), 302330.
73. See L. Ammann, Shadjar al-Durr, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 9:176ab;
garat
G. Schregle, Die Sultanin von egypten: Sa

ad-Durr in der arabischen Geschichtsschreibung und Literatur (Wiesbaden, 1961).

74. Thorau, Lion of Egypt, 4358.
75. P. Jackson, The Mamluk
Institution in Early Muslim India, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society 1990, 340358; P. Jackson, The Dehli Sultanate: A Political and Military
History (Cambridge, UK, 1999).
76. Ammann, Shadjar al-Durr.
77. This touches on a much larger and more complicated matter: gender relations in
the mamluk
Sultanate as a whole and within the mamluk
elite in particular. See the
studies by J. Berkey, H. Lut, and C. Petry in Nikke Keddi and Beth Baron (eds.), Women
in Middle Eastern History (New Haven, 1991).
78. On the coming of the Mongols to the Middle East, including Chinggis Khans rst

The Mamluk
Institution

75

incursion in 1219, see David Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), 6871, 145158.
For their invasion of Syria in 1260, see Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, chap. 1.
For the attitudes of the crusaders toward the Mongols, see P. Jackson, The Crisis in the
Holy Land in 1260, English Historical Review 95 (1980): 481513.
79. For these events, see Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 333363; R.
Amitai, Mongol Raids into Palestine, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1986: 236
242.
80. For some possible reasons why most of the Mongol army withdrew from Syria at
this time, see D. Morgan, The Mongols in Syria, 12601300, in P. Edbury (ed.),
Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff, 1985), 231235.
81. R. Amitai-Preiss, Ayn Jal
ut
Revisited, Tarh 2 (1992): 119150.
82. Abu Shama,

Tarajim

rijal
al-qaranayn al-sadis

wa l-sabi
al-maruf
bil-dhayl ala
al-rawdatayn,
f
ed. M. Kawthar (Cairo, 1947), 208.
83. In all fairness, my view is somewhat at variance with that proposed by J. M. Smith
Jr., Ayn Jal
ut:
Mamluk Success or Mongol Failure? Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
44 (1984): 307344, who sees signicant disparity between the Mongol and the mamluk

soldiers, in spite of their similar origins; cf. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 214
225.
84. For the self-image of the mamluks
and their efforts to achieve legitimacy in the eyes
of their subjects, see R. S. Humphreys, The Expressive Intent of the Mamluk Architecture of Cairo: A Preliminary Essay, Studia Islamica 35 (1972): 69119; I. Lapidus,
Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1967), chap. 1; R. Kruk,
History and Apocalypse: Ibn al-Nass Justication of Mamluk Rule, Der Islam 72
(1995): 324337.
85. For the institutions of the mamluk
sultanate, see Holt, Age of the Crusades, 138
154, esp. 143146, for the decline of the civilian bureaucrats.
86. There is, of course, one major exception to this generalization: the third reign of alMalik al-Nasir
Muhammad b. Qalawun (r. 13101340), although he was indeed a typical puppet in his rst two reigns (12931294, 12991309). On the role of the sultan and
the transference of power in the sultanate, see P. M. Holt, The Position and Power of the
Mamluk Sultan, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975): 237
249; D. Ayalon, Mamluk
Military AristocracyA Non-Hereditary Nobility, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 205210 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, Islam and
the Abode of War [Aldershot, 1994], art. VI).
87. See the fairly technical discussion in H. Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, a.h.
564741/11691341 (London, 1972), 2672; Sato Tsugitaka, State and Rural Society in
Medieval Islam: Sultans, Muqtas and Fallahun (Leiden, 1997), chaps. 36, 8.
88. The term dawla today, of course, means state, but in the later Middle Ages it still
retained its earlier meaning of dynasty. Interesting enough, the Ottoman Empire is
referred to by mamluk
writers as dawlat al-tarakima

(the Turcoman dynasty, reecting

the origins of the Ottoman family) or even dawlat al-rum
(the dynasty of Anatolia).
This was in spite of the fact that most of the late mamluk
sultans and many of the later
Mamluk
elites were Circassians; see below.
89. D. Ayalon, Bahri Mamluks, Burji MamluksInadequate Names for the Two

76

Reuven Amitai

Reigns of the Mamluk Sultanate, TarhM 1 (1990): 353 (reprinted in D. Ayalon, Islam
and the Abode of War [Aldershot, 1994], art. IV). See below for more about the mistaken
use of Burj to describe the second half of the sultanate.
90. For general surveys of the period, see Irwin, Middle East in the Middle Ages, 37
84; Holt, Age of the Crusades, 90108; L. Northrup, The Bahr
Mamluk
Sultanate, in
C. Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 1:242289 (a
good survey of the entire Bahr
Period). For specic biographies of sultans, see Thorau,
Lion of Egypt; L. Northrup, From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Manfsur
Qalaw
un

and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria, 678689 a.h./12791290
a.d. (Stuttgart, 1998).
91. See Irwin, Middle East in the Middle Ages, 85104.
92. R. Amitai, The Remaking of the Military Elite of Mamluk
Egypt by al-Na
sir
Muhammad

b. Qalaw
un,

Studia Islamica 72 (1990): 145163.

93. C. Melville, Sometimes by the Sword, Sometimes by the Dagger: The Role of
the Isma ilis in Mamluk-Mongol

Relations in the 8th/14th century, in F. Daftary (ed.),

Mediaeval Isma ili History and Thought (Cambridge, UK, 1996), 247263; R. Amitai,
The Resolution of the Mongol-Mamluk War, in R. Amitai and M. Biran (eds.), Mongols, Turks and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (Leiden, 2005),
359390.
94. The rst scholar to make this important observation was D. Ayalon, whose systematic thoughts on the matter appeared in The Expansion and Decline of Cairo Under
the Mamluks and Its Background, in R. Curiel (ed.), Itinraires dOrient: Hommages
Claude Cahen, published as Res Orientales 6 (1994): 1320, based on a lecture given in
the early 1970s. Some earlier remarks by Ayalon on this subject were noted by R. Amitai
in a review of his book Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (Aldershot, 1994), which appeared in Bulletin of the Middle East Studies Association 29 (1995): 252. A more detailed study of the pivotal nature of the period, with many
important and original observations, is A. Levanoni, A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Naf
sir Muhammad
f
ibn Qalaw
un,
13101341 (Leiden, 1995).
95. Maqrz, Kitab
al-suluk
li-marifat duwal al-muluk,
2:524525; a partial translation is in Levanoni, Turning Point, 55. The passage continues, giving more information
about how al-Nasir
Muhammad treated and pampered his mamluks.

96. See Ayalon, Lesclavage du mamelouk; Ayalon, Mamluk,

Encyclopaedia of Islam, 66:314321; H. Rabie, The Training of the Mamluk

Faris,

in V. J. Parry and M. E.
Yapp (eds.), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East (London, 1975), 153163.
97. Holt, Age of the Crusades, 121129.
98. B. Fleming, Literary Activities in the Mamluk Halls and Barracks, in M. RosenAyalon (ed.), Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem, 1977), 249260.

99. See the brief but important general comments in D. Ayalon, Cerkes,
ii. Mamluk

period, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:2324. For the Circassian period in general, see J.-C.
Garcin, The Regime of the Circassian Mamluks, in C. Petry (ed.), The Cambridge
History of Egypt, vol. 1, Islamic Egypt, 6401517 (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 290317.
100. This is the basis for the misnomer Burj Period, used by some modern scholars and alluded to above, for the Circassian Period in general, as if there had been

The Mamluk
Institution

77

some connection between the mamluks

of Circassian origin ca. 1300 and those of threequarters of a century later.
101. G. Wiet, Barsbay,

Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1:10531054; A. Darraj, L Egypte

sous le rgne de Barsbay, 825841/14221438 (Damascus, 1961). For a more positive
assessment of his regime, see Garcin, Regime of the Circassian Mamluks.
102. For two interpretations of the mamluks

decline, see D. Ayalon, Some Remarks

on the Economic Decline of the Mamluk
Sultanate, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam 16 (1993): 108124; R. Lopez, H. Miskimin, and A. Udovitch, England to Egypt,
13501500: Long-Term Trends and Long-Distance Trade, in M. A. Cook (ed.), Studies
in the Economic History of the Middle East from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day
(London, 1970), 93128 (esp. 115128, by Udovitch).
103. There may, however, have been some signs of incipient opposition in Syria toward the end of the sultanate; see Lapidus, Muslim Cities, chap. 5.
104. For this affair, not one of the high points of mamluk
military prowess, see Holt,
Age of the Crusades, 179.
105. On this campaign, see S. Harel, The Struggle for Domination in the Middle East:
The Ottoman-Mamluk War, 14851491 (Leiden, 1995).
106. For the two reigns of these two sultans, see the books by C. Petry, Twilight of
Majesty: The Reigns of Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in
Egypt (Seattle, 1993), and Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and
Egypts Waning as a Great Power (Albany, 1994). The matter of Qansuhs possible plans
for rebuilding the military are hinted at by Petry in his article The Military Institution
and Innovation in the Late Mamluk Period, in C. Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History of
Egypt, vol. 1, Islamic Egypt, 6401517 (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 478489.
107. This is based on the argument presented in D. Ayalon, Gunpowder and Firearms
in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Medieval Society, 2nd ed. (London, 1978). For
a different view, see Robert Irwins Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Sultanate,
in A. Levanoni and M. Winter (eds.), The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and
Society (Leiden, 2004), 117139, which forcefully challenges Ayalons thesis.
108. For the events of this period, see P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent,
15161922 (London, 1966). For the neo-mamluk
institution, see D. Ayalon, Studies in
al-Jabart: Notes on the Transformation of Mamluk Society in Egypt under the Ottomans, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 3 (1960): 148174,
275325. Jane Hathaway, in an important and original book (The Politics of Households
in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdagli
[Cambridge, UK, 1996]), has called into
question much of the mamlukness

of this period. To my mind, her criticism of the

Ayalon-Holt neo-mamluk
model is overdrawn. See my review of her book in The Times
Literary Supplement, May 30, 1997, p. 9.
109. H. Inalcik, Ghulam,
iv.Ottoman Empire, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:1087

1090; R. Murphey, Yei Ceri,

ibid., 11:322331. For military slavery in Safawid Iran,
a subject that space prevents me from exploring, see C. E. Bosworth, Ghulam,

ii.
Persia, ibid., 2:1086.
110. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 69.
111. Douglas H. Johnson, Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the

78

Reuven Amitai

Twentieth Century, in Lonie J. Archer (ed.), Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labor
(London, 1988), 142156.
112. Abd al-Raham
an
b. Muhammad

Ibn Khaldun,
Kitab
al-Ibar (Bulaq, 1284/
1867), 5:371; translation (with slight changes) is from B. Lewis (ed. and tr.), Islam from
the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (New York, 1974), 1:9799.
As far as I am aware, the rst scholar to note this important passage was D. Ayalon, who
rst translated (into Hebrew) it in Eretz-Israel 7 (1964): 142143; see also Ayalon,
Mamlukiyy

at,
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980): 341346.
113. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 308314, 331332.

Armed Slaves and Political Authority in Africa in

the Era of the Slave Trade, 14501800
john thornton

No problem of power is more vexing in Africa or elsewhere than that of

maintaining armed forces. Vital to any political system, both for protection
from abroad and for security at home, the organization and capability of
violence that makes soldiers effective also makes them a potential threat. In a
search for the most loyal soldiers, African rulers sometimes opted to arm the
most dependent groups in society, and indeed, the regularity with which slaves
were armed in Africa suggests that ghting was as much a part of the work
routine of slaves as any other labor. But by arming slaves and using them to
enhance power, rulers also ran the risk of creating a cohesive group whose
interests might run counter to their own, or in the worst case might lead to a
military coup dtat. Furthermore, the role of slaves as private property raised
the possibility that wealthy people might also recruit armies and challenge the
state. As a nal option, slaves might break free altogether, become corporate
groups, and eventually form states in their own right.
Thinking about armed slaves in Africa is especially difcult because the
continents slavery was so elastic and ill-dened. In Africa, various institutions of dependency were widespread because, much more so than in Europe
and most of Asia, dependents such as slaves played a special role as private,
wealth-producing property in a legal system where land was not recognized
as property. This important legal divergence explains the large numbers of

79

80

John Thornton

people held as slaves and the wide range of their deployment. African societies are sometimes viewed as slave societies because of the pervasiveness
and importance of dependent institutions that can be dened as slavery, but
often slaves have rights or privileges that result in African slave-holding systems being held to be benign.
Indeed, because of the legal divergence and the wide range of employments,
as well as a lack of detailed contemporary documentation, scholars have
balked at dening all the many categories of dependent groups as slaves.
Some have opted to call them serfs or insisted on using terms in local languages to stress the uniqueness of their status and place them outside of comparative study. To take an example in which status is detailed in contemporary documents, in Ndongo, a large kingdom in west central Africa, free
commoners were called ana murinda (singular mona murinda) or children of
the murinda (a term for a state), and there were at least two categories of
slaves: abika (singular mubika), acquired largely in war and vulnerable to
sale, and ijiko (singular kijiko), perhaps originally also acquired in war, bound
to the land but not salable or transferable, except for limited circumstances, a
status that might rightly be regarded as serfdom.
These denitional and related status issues make the problem of armed
slaves especially vexing for African history. For comparative purposes, I have
dened as slaves all dependent groups that originated in captivity or judicial
condemnation and bore hereditary dependent status. In many cases, however,
I have had to accept the judgment of witnesses who employed the term slave
(or its equivalent in languages other than English) even if an exact legal status
or origin is otherwise unknown.
In addition to denitional difculties, those who seek to understand armed
slaves as soldiers in Africa also run into serious evidentiary problems. Africa
had hundreds of distinct societies of various dimensions, and a great many of
them kept no written records or kept records that bear on these issues only
obliquely. Retrospective reconstruction from modern oral tradition and ethnographic analogy, once a popular way of circumventing the illiteracy of many
African societies, is increasingly seen as less effective than was once believed in
recovering institutional and social details of past times. So in examining the
question of armed slaves in Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century
we are necessarily left with the uneven record of mostly outside observers.
Nevertheless, several patterns in the use of armed slaves are visible. One of
the most important was to facilitate a centralization of power. A ruler, acting
as a private citizen, often acquired slaves and used their labor to enhance his
revenue, or more important, used their potential as soldiers to create a powerful coercive force to act on his will. Using these forces, the ruler might be able

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

81

to subvert constitutional arrangements that limited his power and rule with
greater efciency and authority. The mechanisms and motivations for using
armed slaves to centralize power are well illustrated by the Moroccan pashalik
of Timbuktu. In 1591 Judar Pasha, a Spanish renegade operating under the
auspices of the sultan of Morocco, carved this state out of the Niger Bend in
modern-day Mali from lands seized from Songhay. A few years after the conquest, the troops of the pashalik, who were free and had been recruited mostly
from mercenaries, were effectively independent of their Moroccan overlord.
Within this new state, power resided in the army, which elected its pashas in a
system of rotation: each of the three divisions of the army had the option of
placing their candidate before the others. If all agreed, the pasha remained in
ofce as long as he had their support, for as soon as a major leader withdrew
support, the pasha had to step down.
In this context of insecure power based on a politically engaged army, Pasha
Mansur ibn Masud al Zari turned to armed slaves to augment his standing.
Elected pasha in 1712, he was deposed shortly after a humiliating military
defeat caused him to lose the condence of the army. But he was prepared to
do what he had to in order to gain power, even without the army, indeed, he
only reluctantly left when a senior cleric read him the law on the duties of
pashas. In spite of this setback, Mansur was reelected on July 5, 1716. Determined not to be deposed again, he decided to outmaneuver the formal structure of government and army and employed slaves of local (not Moroccan)
origin, called legha, as a private military force. In order to build this body
quickly he not only employed his personal slaves, who had served as a bodyguard, but increased their numbers by luring others who wished to leave their
masters. In the years that followed, Mansurs slave soldiers harassed the people, redirected tax revenues due the Moroccan soldiers, and undercut their
position. These armed slaves also played a role in regular military expeditions. His rivals quickly recognized the threat this new armed force represented to the delicate constitutional balance and challenged his position. Despite the support of a civilian crowd, however, the legha troops suppressed the
rebellion.
Mansurs use of armed slaves, which drew on local and Islamic traditions,
represents one pole of the use of slaves to increase power; the counterreaction it
provoked reveals an equally ancient and troubling problem. Armed slaves,
whether used as bodyguards for subordinate ofcials or perhaps as security
forces for merchants, might be developed into a power base that could threaten
central authority or might allow wealthier groups in the general population to
demand a greater share in decision making. Therefore, just as rulers might see
armed slaves as a way of developing and extending their power without having

82

John Thornton

to consult others, those same others might see in their own armed slaves the
means to free themselves from autocratic rulers.
If Mansurs military innovations were both promising and divisive, it did not
take long for his rivals to copy his methods. In the aftermath of the rebellion,
Timbuktu was sharply divided, and all of the army factions began to build up
their private power, fortifying their houses and building towers from which
they exchanged hostilities. The religious leaders (ulama) of Timbuktu led a
revolt against Mansur by arming their own dependents to counter the legha.
A signicant battle occurred in July 1719 just east of Timbuktu in which both
the armed slaves of the elite of Timbuktu and the legha of Mansur played an
important role. Mansurs defeat in this engagement led to his downfall,
which came on October 14, 1719. The legha, commanded by Shaykh Buro
Kandi, were slaughtered.
Mansurs rise and fall illustrate the potentials and pitfalls of arming dependents, and the lesson was not lost. Pashas who followed Mansur armed their
own legha, as a part of the military establishment of the state. In 1743, for
example, Pasha Said marched out of Timbuktu to settle a rebellion with an
army that included numbers of legha. The presence of other armed slaves arrayed against the pashas power prevented a repetition of the dramatic events
of Mansurs time. For example, armed slaves reinforced the army of Sarakaina
when it was attacked by the pashas men in 1729.
Mansurs attempt to expand his power through the use of armed slaves was
not unique in African history; similar ploys were commonplace, particularly in
times of ux when various groups competed for authority. Like Mansur, rulers
of powerful states in central Africa relied on servile groups to enhance their
authority and ensure the loyalty of their soldiers. Both of the two large kingdoms that dominated west central Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Kongo and Ndongo, used a core of highly skilled professional soldiers to ght in their wars, though countless other subjects might also be
drafted for supply duties or to form a body of archers who loosed a few arrows
at the start of battles but quickly retired once serious ghting began. Battles
were usually resolved by the encounter of a few thousand skilled soldiers who
fought hand to hand. In Kongo, these troops carried defensive arms (shields)
as well as swords and thrusting lances, while in Ndongo in general they employed few or no defensive arms and used battleaxes and swords as their typical weapons. The proper and effective deployment of these weapons at close
quarters required strenuous training (often encompassed in military dancing)
and thus put a premium on supporting these troops for longer periods than the
draftees.
But the status of these professional troops diverged widely in the two coun-

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

83

tries. In Kongo they were regarded as noble and sometimes lived on stipends
supplied by the state, but their status in Ndongo was more ambiguous, akin to
that of slaves. Professional soldiers (kimbari, plural imbari), commanded by
ofcers called kilamba, seem to have been kept in special villages for their support, but their standing lay somewhere between the two other servile classes
(that is, abika and ijiko).
Events in early seventeenth-century Ndongo can illuminate the important
role armed slaves played. In 1575 the Portuguese founded their colony of
Angola, and a series of wars with various African powers, including Ndongo,
ensued. In the 1620s, after the Portuguese had dealt a series of devastating
defeats to Ndongo, its royal family ed to islands in the Kwanza River. Many
of the royal dependents and slaves were captured by the Portuguese forces and
placed on lands under their control. After the suicide of King Ngola Mbandi in
1624, leadership passed to his sister Ana de Sousa Njinga Mbandi, best known
as Queen Njinga. From the very beginning of her reign Njinga was anxious to
have slaves (in correspondence written in Portuguese she often used escravo
or even pea to refer to such people) returned to her. Although many were
ijiko, who would work elds to supply the state with its revenue, others were
war slaves. Njinga was particularly successful in persuading the kilambas to
desert the Portuguese, and as the governor, Ferno de Sousa, complained, she
was gaining such strength that her forces would soon surpass his, in spite of his
having a number of collaborators and rivals of Njinga in his camp. Ndongos
skilled soldiers were drawn from a servile class that was the mainstay of
Ndongo administration, not only in the period of crisis and war against Portugal but in earlier periods as well.
Like their west central African counterparts, the rulers of late eighteenthcentury Oyo sought to counterbalance powerful rural groups and court factions by recruiting slaves for their palace guard, including both infantry and
cavalry. Initially, a set of professional soldiers serving under captains made up
the bulk of the army, especially its highly skilled cavalry. These war leaders
were appointed by the alan, or ruler, but they recruited their own soldiers
from the free population, some perhaps from slaves, according to oral evidence collected centuries later, which is admittedly vague and inconclusive.
Their superior was the basorun, a powerful ofcial who could use the power
of the army to cow the ruler. Indeed, Gaha, who held the ofce from 1754 to
1774, became the effective ruler and killed several competitors. Against the
war leaders, the alan set a corps of his own slaves that augmented the army
and provided him with a force that was under his personal control. Abiodun
(177489), for example, forcibly detained a group of several thousand Popos
who had come to his kingdom and joined them to his army, no doubt to

84

John Thornton

bolster his own forces in the face of competition from the army. In fact, the
struggles over power that characterized late imperial Oyo, especially after
1830, were heightened by the increasing strength of the rulers personal forces,
which included an expanded number of slave soldiers. As in Timbuktu, rival
groups managed to use their own armed retainers to match the challenge
posed by the state.
These examples illustrate processes taking place in larger and more powerful
African political entities; much of Africa in this period, however, was dominated by considerably smaller political units. The dynamics of these small units
reveal subtle differences in the ways in which armed slaves played a role in
politics. The Gold Coast in the seventeenth century illustrates a pattern in
which the small size of polities necessarily weakens the resources available to
any person and makes developing groups of dependents particularly attractive
to those seeking power. In this period, the region that is largely formed by
modern southern Ghana was divided into about thirty sovereign entities, most
of which did not have areas larger than about a county in the United States or
populations exceeding thirty thousand. The internal constitution and hence
division of authority of each one varied: some were, in the words of Willem
Bosman, the Dutch factor in the last years of the seventeenth century, republics with a relatively weak ruler and strong subordinates and others monarchies where the ruler had much more sway. Either way, the classication
was only a tendency, for political power was often shared between a king and a
group of his family members or retainers, an aristocracy that controlled ofces
and collected taxes, and the wealthiest of commoners, who were often enriched by trade. Such groups checked the powers of the rulers and potentially
could block efforts to centralize power and decision making, thus making each
polity a delicately balanced entity of opposed interests and forces, where either
side might look to innovations to increase their power or defend their rights
and where the smallness of scale made it possible for small groups to amass
resources sufcient to alter political relationships. Therefore, considerable internal jockeying occurred between rulers holding formal power and other
formal and informal groups that sought to undermine this power.
In the Gold Coast, from the sixteenth century through the late seventeenth,
highly skilled and professional soldiers conducted warfare. Although many
ordinary people might be recruited, the core of the ghting force was a crack
unit of free professionals who fought hand to hand and who possessed specialized skills in such ghting. Many Gold Coast states had professional
bodies of soldiers who were attached to state service, often called asafo, who
served as a sort of professional association and consequently seem to have had
a certain amount of independent power. Certainly they refused at times to

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

85

ght beyond a stipulated period, as the French visitor Jean Barbot noted in the
late seventeenth century, when he said these soldiers were under no obligation to stay abroad any longer than they think t. Not always satised with
the demands of this professional association, and perhaps interested in extending their own decision-making power, kings employed slaves (as well as
mercenaries) as special units not only to increase the size of armies but also to
ensure the loyalty and service of those who fought for them. At the same time,
however, the aristocrats who controlled subunits of the state and served as
ofcers in the army had their own personal retainers and armed slaves, complicating the situation. The sum of these complexities was noted by Jean Barbot, for he observed that in dealing with the army, whether as king or aristocrat, any ofcers authority extends not beyond those who are his proper
slaves. Barbots near-contemporary Willem Bosman was even more emphatic about the advantages of slave soldiers, for in his view, only slaves
could be commanded to war. A French traveler, visiting the western state of
Assini in the opening years of the eighteenth century, noted the importance of
slaves in its armed forces, arguing that slaves were the best and most loyal
soldiers in the army. Thus, in these armies, free associations of professional
soldiers with their own political agendas served in units where slaves, loyal
either to the king or to his aristocratic ofcers, also served and managed to
counter some of their interests.
Self-aggrandizing kings increasingly resorted to slaves or other dependents
to build their armed forces. Toward the end of the seventeenth century and
especially in the eighteenth, many parts of the Gold Coast witnessed the rise of
new and more powerful states, characterized by a strong military and more
centralization in decision making. Akwamu was among the pioneers of the
new system, which rested on a strong army of slaves under the kings direct
command. In enumerating the kings rights, Eric Tilleman, the Danish factor
at Accra in the late seventeenth century, noted that he has for warfare the best
and most experienced slaves to be found in the entire country. Others
observed that the kings soldiers were all his relatives or slaves, emphasizing
the rise of new and more dependent forces. A key point was the ownership of
weapons, for the free soldiers of the asafo companies owned their own materiel, while the slave and dependent soldiers had only those that their masters gave them. Perhaps, as Ray Kea, an authority on warfare in the Gold
Coast, has suggested, the somewhat mysterious Sikadinger, the crafty
young men whom the early eighteenth-century rulers of Akwamu employed
to raid their enemies and sometimes steal people as slaves, were themselves
slaves of the ruler.
Just as arming slaves might provide kings and aristocrats with a core of loyal

86

John Thornton

soldiers and perhaps help them increase their political strength at home and
abroad, so armed slaves provided some Gold Coast merchants with opportunities to set themselves up even against kings. The late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries saw the emergence of a number of powerful merchants
with varied trade connections, in both domestic and overseas trade. Many of
these merchants became more or less independent of any state. For instance,
John Konny, a merchant of Ahanta who had become very rich and virtually
independent thanks to trade with the Europeans, set up his own stone fort
with artillery mounted in the bastions. Such powerful merchants retained
large groups of armed men, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand,
and engaged in some of the wars of their time. Konny, for example, was said to
have 900 well-drilled soldiers in 1711, when he defeated a Dutch force as
well as creating havoc for a number of local rulers. More than likely, these
merchants drew their soldiers from among their own slaves.
The tendency to use slaves and dependent soldiers was probably a product
of political insecuritywhether of rulers who had little faith in their political
system or of merchants or subordinates who did not trust their rulers. These
conditions existed until the early eighteenth century, which was the golden age
of armed slaves in the Gold Coast. New polities such as Asante emerged in the
mid-to-late eighteenth century, exercising greater royal power and exhibiting
less need of slaves serving as soldiers than in the past. A change in weaponry
may have facilitated the move away from small groups of dependent soldiers
and cost the professional military companies their power. The great states of
the eighteenth century used conscripted militias equipped with muskets to
wage wars that focused on missile weapons requiring little skill in lieu of the
professional and skilled hand-to-hand combat of earlier eras.
Just as African leaders employed slaves to enhance their authority, so in
Angola Europeans pursued the same tactics. When the Portuguese entered
Angola they brought their own small army, which initially operated as a mercenary force under Ndongo command. After war broke out between Portugal
and Ndongo in 1579, however, the Portuguese had to ght for their land on
their own, and needed to increase their military strength quickly. To this end,
they made alliances with dissident African nobles (sobas), who supplied them
with troops. Sobas, however, turned out to be ckle in their loyalties, for the
Portuguese found that, after a defeat in 1590, their allies abandoned them and
they lost most of their military forces. From the time they entered into war in
Angola, the Portuguese also began acquiring as well as selling slaves. Slaveworked farms soon sprouted along the major rivers, and Portuguese planters
supplied the foodstuffs that would eventually feed the slaves awaiting export
in the thousands. Thus Portuguese Angola became a slave colony not only
for its role in the external export of people but also in its domestic economy.

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87

Given their military weakness, the Portuguese soon made use of their own
armed slaves. For instance, slaves were among the Portuguese troops that
fought at the Battle of Talandongo in 1583. Armed slaves continued to serve
in Portuguese forces, though never as the majority of the soldiers, throughout
the seventeenth century, even after the Portuguese had acquired more regular
forces. In 1644, for example, in mobilizing an army to ght against Queen
Njinga, the Portuguese included, among various armed groups from Portugal
or the allied African rulers, slaves of the Portuguese, but they were not numerous. By the late eighteenth century the army serving the Portuguese included free imbari as well as those regarded as captive or slaves, perhaps
once simply armed slaves now settled into regular life. Thus, both Portuguese and African powers in Angola employed servile dependents as soldiers,
in each case using them to strengthen their hand against rival groups within
their own society, and in the Portuguese case, to create a dependent group that
would make them less beholden to local power holders.
In a few areas where the larger states did not emerge, the pattern of using
slave soldiers survived. The mouth of the Volta River, for example, was dotted
with small polities, many formed by refugee groups that had ed the regional
powers farther west. Here conscripts served in the armies, to be sure, but they
were still joined by a host of other groups, and the private armies of slaves
raised by prosperous merchants to protect their interests in a politically insecure region still played a role. For example, in 1784 the German Isert, who
worked as a Danish factor at Accra, accompanied a mixed group of allies in
one war. One of the most powerful contingents raised for the war belonged to
the merchant named Late Awoko, who had risen from a low estate to become
prominent in Popo. Isert described his army as comprising all his serfs,
presumably his dependents and probably long-serving slaves.
Although the slaves whom rulers or private citizens armed seem to have
been drawn largely from among their own dependents, some systems of military recruitment can be regarded as essentially servile institutions, even though
their functioning does not fully accord with the idea of slavery developed in
European and colonial American contexts. For example, in the Ottoman Empire, the sultans drew the Janissary corps, an important component of their
ghting forces, from a special tax levied on the Christian population of the
country. This tax required Christian households to render up a child to be
effectively enslaved by the state and to serve in the army for life. It is common
to describe the Devshirme system, as this special taxation was called, as a
special form of slavery.
The Kingdom of Dahomey, located in modern Benin, where the possession
of a powerful army was an important branch of royal authority, provides a
good example of servile recruitment like the Devshirme. In the general military

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culture of the area, troops were often raised by levy by powerful local personages, who were styled as nobles. As long as the army depended on such
levies, which the crown could not control, Dahomeys centralization would
not be complete. But Dahomeys rulers looked for ways to develop an army
under more direct supervision. William Snelgrave, writing about the 1720s,
noted that the kings army included several companies with proper colors
and ofcers whose strength was maintained by acquiring young boys. The
king, he noted, allows every common soldier a boy at publick charge to be
trained up, most of army consists of soldiers bred in this way. These boys,
according to the French observer Pruneau de Pommegorge, were raised by a
levy on villages at the rate of one boy per village. The basis of this interesting
recruiting device may be found in further observations made by the English
trader Robert Norris, who visited the Dahomey capital in 1772. He observed
that some young men paid the king of Dahomey to receive wives, though he
does not reveal the source of the kings possession of these wives (perhaps they
were slaves). The children of these women, however, were held to belong to
the king, were raised in villages remote from their birthplace, and were appropriated by the king when they had grown and lost knowledge of the family.
Arming slaves was an important tool in the arsenal of any ruler wishing to
expand his power, but he might also face challenges from within the slave
corps as well as from the displaced power holders or their own slave forces.
The slow rise of the ceddo, or warrior commanders, in eighteenth-century
Senegambia reveals the potential for political transformation inherent in using
slaves as soldiers. Their origins lie in the turmoil of the last years of the
seventeenth century, when the Kingdom of Great Jolof and the Empire of
Great Fulo that absorbed it declined, giving rise to new kingdoms, especially
Waalo, Kajoor, and Bawol, that sought to assert their own independent existence while trying to incorporate their neighbors. At the same time, the new
states often suffered internal turmoil as rivals for the throne fought each other
and enlisted the aid of neighbors in their machinations. Lat Sukaabe Faal
(16951720) sought both to consolidate his internal position and unite the
two kingdoms of Kajoor and Waalo. Further inland the same sort of struggle
was represented by Samba Gelaajo Jeegi (172531) of Futa Tooro in the
middle Senegal valley, who represented the ideal of a warrior with his devoted band of followers exploiting political weaknesses and strengthening his
power. These new armies and the states they created were regimes in which
slaves, becoming ofcers and rising to commanding positions in the army,
came to dominate the rulers, while all participated in constant slave raiding
within and outside their domains. The French governor Doumet de Siblas, in
a memoir of 1769, noted that the kings of Kajoor and Waalo governed their

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

89

kingdoms with a network of captifs who served as generals and great men
of the country. These slave ofcials also commanded his only army, which was
composed of his personal slaves. The remaining soldiers, raised by levy from
the countryside, were free people, though they were undisciplined and of
relatively little value compared to the slave soldiers of the standing army.
These powerful commanders exercised such inuence that they had become
effectively the rulers of the states where traditional leaders were powerless
to make decisions without their consent. The era of the ceddo was characterized by the power of military slaves and their machinations, often criticized for their brutality and injustice by Islamic leaders and holy men. In the
Bambara area, slave soldiers called jonjon created a new dynasty in 1776,
while elsewhere they effectively ruled the country though they did not formally take power.
The possibility that slaves might form corporate unions capable of overawing their rulers reveals one of the clearest dangers of using slaves to bolster
power. Perhaps the most dramatic instance of slaves becoming a power in
their own right, and indeed a challenge to our understanding of the term slave,
comes from the Imbangala of west central Africa. The origins of the Imbangala are mysterious; modern traditions of their descendents point to long
migrations from deep in central Africa, which an early generation of scholars
took literally but which are at best viewed as symbolic today. Whatever their
ultimate origin, their lifestyle was rst described by Andrew Battell, an English
sailor serving unwillingly with the Portuguese in Angola, who spent about
seventeen months with them in 16001601. Based on Battells notes, and
the work of other eyewitnesses, the Imbangala appear to have been military
or bandit bands (their earliest traditions traced them to ofcials in the central highlands of Angola). They may well have been originally army units
that revolted or were set free by turbulent times in the late sixteenth century
and who, like some of the freebooting armies of the Thirty Years War in
Europe, became entities unto themselves. The Imbangala were independent
bands that recruited their members by capturing young boys from late childhood to young adulthood. These boys were then made to undergo a traumatic
initiation that included cannibalism, perhaps intended to break their moral
training and equate them with witches or other evildoers who symbolically ate
their victims. Moreover, they killed any children born in their camp, so as not
to be impeded in their march, and perhaps as another traumatic connection to
evil. They lived by rapine, one of their distinctive habits being the destructive
way that they used palm trees, which normally were grown and tapped by
villagers over long periods of time. But the Imbangala way was to cut the trees
down, draw out a large quantity of sap to make wine, and move on to the next

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John Thornton

region, thus devastating the economy of all areas through which they passed.
The palm wine, soon reinforced by European alcohol, helped to maintain
control over the group. They were, in short, a band of former soldiers, exslaves, and slaves (their captured boys were slaves, at least for a time).
Imbangala bands entered European service in the early seventeenth century and were deployed to help Portugal break the military deadlock in their
war against Ndongo. They surely did break the deadlock, although their destructive habits were so devastating that soon all parties were trying to bring
them under control, while simultaneously seeking to use them as allies as they
fought each other. Playing on the problems of control, one settler came up
with the novel idea of importing large quantities of alcohol with which to pay
them on a regular basis, perhaps to keep them from destroying loyal Portuguese areas as much as to keep them in service. When the diplomatic
situation in Angola and Ndongo settled down in the 1660s, a series of treaties
either sought their destruction or granted bands security in one or another
area where they became regional leaders, of which the model was Kasanje, a
large state on the Kwango.
The Imbangala method of recruitment made it possible for other leaders in
central Africa to describe them as bands of slaves, as indeed Queen Njinga did
in her treaty with Portugal. Fearing their power over her kingdom, when
making her rst set of proposals in 1655, Njinga asked the Portuguese to
guarantee that they would support her leaving my lands only to my sister and
not to my slaves. Clearly these were slaves unlike those employed in any
previous African or European army and unlike the legha of the Middle Niger
or the armed bodies of mercenaries in the service of Gold Coast merchants.
Rather, they were a self-sustaining system of slavery that served only other,
more highly placed slaves as masters. Paradoxically, they served no master but
that of their own group, a fact that was revealed in their selection of their own
leadership as late as the 1770s, even of the groups that had been integrated
into the Portuguese army. They were thus slaves within their group, but not
slaves with regard to outside authority.
Africa thus reveals a variety of ways in which slaves were armed, serving
various masters to centralize states, decentralize them, or even, in the case of
the Imbangala, to destroy them altogether. The complexity of arming slaves in
Africa parallels the complexity of the institution itself and challenges us to
consider and reconsider our notions of the nature and meaning of slavery in
the African portion of the Atlantic world. Slavery is an institution designed to
provide masters with the maximum private control over their subordinates,
and this two-edged sword can free them from the needs and demands of the
state, but it can also subject them to the dynamics inherent in highly cen-

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

91

tralized power. When slaves are combined with armed forces, its potential to
increase power or destroy it is enhanced, for as the powerful use slaves to
increase their control of disciplined armed forces, they run the great risk of
creating cohesive forces that can be their own undoing.

Notes
1. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400
1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1998), 7597.
2. For an excellent example of the problems of denition, see Joseph Inikori, Slavery
in Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, in Alusine Jalloh and Stephen E. Maizlish,
eds, The African Diaspora (College Station, TX, 1996), 3972.
3. Reconstruction of the nature of pre-colonial slavery has often had to rely on
studies conducted during the colonial period or on oral testimony about institutions that
were no longer functioning. For example, a classic collection of essays on slavery in
Africa, Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Meiers, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977), reveals that many authors, even those who
wrote historical pieces, owe a debt to anthropological research and methods.
4. This is the central contention of Inikori, Slavery in Africa.
5. Baltasar Barreira, Informao acerca dos escravos de Angola, 158283, in Antnio Brsio (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 1st ser., 15 vols. (Lisbon, 1952
88), 3: 22728; Barreira was probably the informant for the more detailed version of
Ndongo social structure (which is followed here) published by Pierre du Jarric in 1610,
Histoire des choses plvs memorables advenves tant ez Indes Orientales que autres pais de
la descouuerte des Portugais (Bordeaux, 1610), 7980. For more documentation and
modern interpretation see Beatrix Heintze, Der Staat Ndongo im 16. Jahrhundert, in
Heintze (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte Angolas im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Ein Lesebuch
(Cologne, 1996), 6192.
6. I have not been able to read the several Arabic-language sources cited below in the
original language and have thus accepted translators renderings of the texts.
7. John Ralph Willis, The Western Sudan from the Moroccan Invasion (1591) to the
Death of Al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1811), in J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds.,
History of West Africa, 3rd ed., 1985), 1:53176; for a more detailed history see Michel
Abitbol, Tombouctou et les Arma: De la conqute marocaine du Soudan nigerien en 1591
lhgmonie de lempire peulh du Macina en 1833 (Paris, 1979). Also see his briefer
statement in the context of a wider region in The End of the Songhay Empire, in B. A.
Ogot, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa (Los Angeles, 1992), 30026.
8. Anonymous, Tedzkiret en-Nisian Akhbar Molouk es-Soudan, ed. and trans. O.
Houdas (Paris, 1966), 2627. This chronicle was written about 1750 by a resident of the
area. It takes the form of biographies of various people arranged alphabetically, and its
chronological and historical content is very diffused throughout it.
9. Ibid., 2930.
10. Ibid., 39.
11. Ibid., 6673.

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12. These dependents might be regarded as slaves; the Arabic text calls them hartani, a
term that is often translated as serfs because they were believed to be descended from
ancient indigenous groups and not enslaved in war. The problem of denition need not
concern us, since for our purposes a hereditary dependent class fullls this analytical
position.
13. Tedzkiret en-Nisian, 22829. Another encounter involved the legha in May and
June (234).
14. Ibid., 4751, 22627.
15. Ibid., 123, 126.
16. Ibid., 19798.
17. John Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 15001800 (London, 1999), 99125.
See also John Thornton, The Art of War in Angola, 15751680, Comparative Studies
in Society and History 30 (1988): 36078.
18. Ferno de Sousa to his children (c. 1632), fols. 22323v, in Beatriz Heintze (ed.),
Fontes para a histria de Angola no sculo XVII, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 198588), 1:227.
19. Robin Law, The Oyo Empire, c. 1600c. 1836: A West African Imperialism in the
Era of the Slave Trade (Oxford, 1977), 8081. Law relies largely on oral evidence for his
reconstruction of the imperial army before 1830, much of it from Samuel Johnsons
classic treatise based on oral tradition, The History of the Yorubas (London, 1921, but
composed 1897, reprinted 1966), and in a few other cases on his own interviews or those
of more recent historians.
20. Law, Oyo Empire, 18992.
21. Johnson, History, 18687.
22. Law, Oyo Empire, 189201.
23. Willem Bosman, Naukeurige beschryving van de Guinese Goud-, Tand- en Slave
Kust (Utrecht, 1704; 2nd ed. Amsterdam, 1709). Translated as A New and Accurate
Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705; reprint, London, 1967), 16579.
24. This section follows Ray Kea, Settlements, Trade, and Polities in the SeventeenthCentury Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982), 13068 with regard to many aspects of military
organization. See also Thornton, Warfare, 5574.
25. Jean Barbot, A Description of the Coast of North and South Guinea, in Awnsham
Churchill and John Churchill, A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1732),
5:294. On this work, see P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, Barbot on Guinea:
The Writings of Jan Barbot on West Africa, 16781712 (Oxford, 1992).
26. Barbot, Description, 294.
27. Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 180.
28. Godfrey Loyer, Relation du voyage du royaume dIssiny, in Paul Roussier, ed.,
LEtablissement dIssiny, 16871702 (Paris, 1935), 21920.
29. Erick Tilleman, En Kort og Enfoldig Beretning om det Landskab Ginea og dets
Beskaffenhed (Copenhagen, 1697), 108, pagination of original marked in English translation of Selena Axelrod Winsnes, A Short and Simple Account of the Country Guinea
and Its Nature (Madison, 1994).
30. Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 71, 7475.
31. Kea, Settlements, 162; see the source cited by Kea, Ludewig Ferdinand Rmer,
Tilforladelig Efterretning om Negotien paa Kysten Guinea . . . (Copenhagen, 1760),

Armed Slaves and Political Authority

93

12526, 14344, original pagination marked in the English translation, Selena Axelrod
Wisnes, A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea, 1760 (Oxford, 2000).
32. See Kwame Daaku, Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 16001720: A Study of
the African Reaction to European Trade (Oxford, 1970), 13031.
33. For the evolution of warfare, see Kea, Settlements, 15864; Thornton, Warfare,
5574.
34. For an overview, see David Brimingham, Trade and Conict in Angola: The
Mbundu and Their Neighbours Under the Inuence of the Portuguese, 14831790 (Oxford, 1966).
35. An early description of these slave-worked estates, called arimos (from the Kimbundu word kudia, to eat) is found in the notes of the Jesuit priest Pero Tavares, who
worked among them in the 1630s. See Louis Jadin, Pero Tavares, missionaire jsuite, ses
travaux apostoliques au Congo et en Angola, 162935, Bulletin, Institut historique
belge de Rome 39 (1967): 32893.
36. Pero Rodrigues, Histria da Residncia dos Padres da Companhia de Jesus em
Angola [1594], Brsio, Monumenta 4:568.
37. Antnio de Oliveira de Cadornega, Histria geral das guerras Angolanas (1681),
ed. Jos Delgado and Manuel Alves da Cunha, 3 vols. (Lisbon 194042, reprinted in
1972), 1:347. See p. 393 for another mention of slaves or freedmen, which the Dutch
lacked, in the Portuguese force in 1646.
38. Elias Alexandre da Silva Corra, Histria de Angola [1789], 2 vols. (Lisbon,
1937), 2:50.
39. Paul Erdmann Isert, Reise nach Guinea und den Caribschen Inseln in Columbia
(Copenhagen, 1788), 8081, original pagination marked in the English translation of
Selena Axelrod Wisnes, Letters on West Africa and the Slave Trade: Paul Erdmann Iserts
Journey to Guinea and the Caribbean Islands in Colombia [1788] (Oxford, 1992).
40. See Claude Cahen, Note sur lesclavage musulman et le devshirme ottoman,
propos des trauvaux rcents, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
13 (1970): 21118, for a survey of literature.
41. Thornton, Warfare, 8894.
42. William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade
(London, 1734; facsimile, London: Cass, 1971), 7778.
43. Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie (Amsterdam, 1789), 164.
44. Robert Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahdee, King of Dahomey an
Inland Country of Guiney (London, 1789; reprint, London, 1968), 8789.
45. Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, trans. Ayi Kwei Armah
(Cambridge, UK, 1998), 8190.
46. See also Thornton, Warfare, 3639.
47. M. Jacques Doumet de Siblas, Mmoire historique sur les diffrentes parties de
lAfrique . . . 1769, mod. ed. C. Becker and V. Martin, Mmoire indit de Doumet
[1769], Bulletin, Institut Foundementale de lAfrique Noire, ser. B, 36/1 (1974): 3840.
48. Barry, Senegambia, 81125.
49. For the best statement of the state of the research in the late 1970s, see Joseph C.
Miller, Kings and Kinsmen: The Imbangala Impact on Angola (Oxford, 1976), which
broke with an earlier interpretation that linked them to the Jaga who invaded Kongo in

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John Thornton

1568. For a challenge, see John Thornton, The Chronology and Causes of Lunda Expansion to the West, c. 17001852, Zambia Journal of History 1 (1981): 113. A
summary of this debate is Ndaywel Nziem, The Poltical System of the Luba and
Lunda: Its Emergence and Expansion, in UNESCO General History of Africa, 8 vols.
(Los Angeles, 198193), 5:588607.
50. The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh, in Angola . . ., rst published in Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimmes (London, 1625), reprint, E. G. Ravenstein, ed., The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell in Angola and Adjoining Lands
(London, 1901), 2134.
51. Plan of Garcia Mendes Castelo Branco, c. January 1620, in Brsio, Monumenta
6:451.
52. I have covered the history of this period in Angola in Marila dos Santos Lopes
(ed.), Histria da expanso Portuguesa no mundo (Lisbon, forthcoming), vol. 9.
53. Queen Njinga to Governor General of Angola, December 13, 1655, in Brsio,
Monumenta, 12:526.
54. Silva Corra, Histria, 2:50.

Making the Chikunda: Military Slavery and

Ethnicity in Southern Africa, 17501900
allen isaacman and derek peterson

From the vantage point of American history, military slavery is a paradox: with rare exceptions, American slaveholders were careful to keep guns
away from their slaves for fear that they would rebel. Scholars of military
slavery have therefore had to explain why owners outside the American South
found it desirable to arm their slaves. Among the rst to propose an explanation was Max Weber. Weber argued that slaves were ideal clients of
patrimonial rulers: owned by the ruler, slaves were bound to obey his commands. Creating a slave army was for a patrimonial ruler a way to dene a
loyal, powerful constituency. Later scholars followed Weber by seeing military
slavery as a strategic prop for patrimonial rulers. David Ayalon attributed
the longevity of the mamluk
sultanate in medieval Egypt to its success in
recruiting and training pliable young slaves. The mamluks

Circassian slaves
were enrolled in a lengthy training program that taught them to think of the
sultan as their father, and themselves as his sons. Indoctrinated through their
training, military slaves were loyal supporters of patrimonial mamluk
sul
tans. Daniel Pipes offered a more specic explanation for the paradox of
military slavery. Muslim citizens, argued Pipes, are inclined for religious reasons to withdraw from politics. Islamic rulers lled the political vacuum
with slave soldiers recruited from outside their realms. Slave soldiers loyalty
could be secured through years of careful training, which imbued them with

95

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Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson

lifelong attachments to the Islamic religion, their master, his dynasty, and their
comrades. Deracinated, isolated, and indoctrinated, slave soldiers lled the
administrative, legal, and political roles left open by Muslim citizens withdrawal from public affairs.
In summary, the scholarly consensus on military slavery has been that arming slaves was a useful political strategy for patrimonial rulers. But in their
eagerness to unravel the paradox of military slavery, scholars have often ignored the lived experiences and political imaginations of slaves themselves.
The focus has been on the strategies by which rulers secured slaves loyalty, not
on how enslaved men organized their daily lives and forged new social identities. Rather than treating slave soldiers as objects of rulers indoctrination, we
think it more revealing to explore slaves own self-fashioning in relation to
their rulers and to each other. It is not enough to accept at face value rulers
claims about their successes in molding slaves political loyalties. We need also
to study how slave soldiers created rituals and practices that made courage,
loyalty, and military discipline seem virtuous, how, that is, they constructed a
culture that idealized military service as a masculine virtue.
This chapter explores how military slaves on Portuguese-run estates along
the Zambesi River came to dene themselves as sharers of a new social identity, Chikunda (the conquerors). The estates, called prazos, were initially
granted to Portuguese settlers who, from the seventeenth century onward,
moved inland from the coastal towns on the Indian Ocean to prot from the
lucrative Zambesi trade. They used slaves as soldiers, equipping them with
guns and spears and using them to collect taxes from peasants, patrol the
borders, and police the estates. Asked to perform highly dangerous tasks in the
service of their owners, slaves developed shared behaviors and beliefs, a patrilineal system of descent and inheritance, and a rich repertoire of cultural
practices that celebrated their prowess as warriors and hunters and distinguished them from the indigenous peasant population. This domain of commonality, we emphasize, was never imposed on them by their owners. Slaves
made themselves Chikunda in order to set themselves apart from the local
peasantry, gain leverage with owners, and lend meaning and prestige to their
lives of danger.
The chapter begins by exploring the relation between military slavery and
economic production on the prazos. Slave soldiers were also traders, hunters,
policemen, and overseers. Their dangerous, demanding work enriched prazo
holders. In the second section we highlight how slave soldiers, commanded to
perform dangerous tasks, valorized courage and military skill. In language,
songs, and ceremonies, through initiation rituals, and in clothing and in facial

Making the Chikunda

97

tattoos, slave soldiers dened themselves as Chikunda and celebrated their

physical prowess. Being Chikunda, we show, was for slave soldiers a way of
dignifying their work with a clear sense of vocation. In the third section we
outline how, after the collapse of the prazos in the nineteenth century and the
manumission of the slaves, former soldiers enlarged on their shared history
and forged a Chikunda ethnic identity. This ethnic identity survives to the
present day.

The Chikunda on the Prazos

The military slavery practiced on the prazos was not unique in precolonial African history. Slaves often served African rulers as soldiers. Their
military might underpinned rulers political power. As early as the thirteenth
century, the rulers of Mali appointed slave ofcials and enrolled slaves in the
military. The eighteenth-century kingdom of Oyo similarly used slaves in
administrative and military capacities. Slaves guarded Oyos king and his family, collected taxes, and administered provincial towns. Armed with cutlasses
and mounted on prized warhorses imported from the north, Oyos slave cavalry was a terrifyingly effective military force. In the nineteenth-century Sudanic state of Damagaram, slaves ofcered cavalry units of up to two thousand men, many of them armed with modern weapons. Slaves also occupied
up to one-half of the titled positions in the state bureaucracy. In northeastern
Africa, Sudanese captives played a prominent role in the Turco-Egyptian army
during the rst half of the nineteenth century. In some contexts, the unbridled
power that slave soldiers exercised earned them the distrust of free citizens. In
the Wolof and Sereer states of the Senegambia, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury rulers used armed slaves called Ceddo to conduct warfare, collect
taxes, and perform other administrative tasks. Their heavy drinking, bright
clothing, long hair, and arrogance offended industrious Muslims. For many
precolonial African rulers, arming slaves was not a last resort. It was, rather,
an established strategy of political consolidation, a means of controlling fractious and potentially rebellious subjects.
What makes the Chikunda case somewhat unusual in African history is the
fact that the slave soldiers served individuals, not a state. For the Portuguese
adventurers and mercenaries who claimed vast estates along the Zambesi River
in the sixteenth century, arming slaves was a means of consolidating control in a
highly uid political context (see map 1). African polities of the Zimbabwe
plateau had for centuries used the Zambesi to export ivory, gold, and slaves to
the coast. The Portuguese adventurers set themselves up as middlemen in this

Map 1. Principal Zambezi Prazos

Making the Chikunda

99

long-established trade, at rst under the patronage of established political

leaders but increasingly with the support of their own followers. These settlers
became extremely powerful, forming military alliances with the rulers of the
Zimbabwean plateau in exchange for economic concessions. The Portuguese
Crown, eager to take advantage of local situations for its own benet, granted
powerful traders titles to massive estates, or prazos. These estate holders,
called prazeiros, were not emissaries of Portuguese colonial authority. The
prazeiros were transfrontiersmen: they crossed political and cultural boundaries and took a new way of life. Over time, they intermarried with the local
population. Many of them adopted the lifestyle, cosmology, and political trappings of the indigenous political authorities. Prazeiros rarely removed local
chiefs or rulers living on their estates: instead, they superimposed themselves
on the existing political hierarchy. Few attempted to establish commercial
agriculture on their estates. Instead, they siphoned off surplus from peasant
producers (colonos) living on the estates and accumulated additional wealth
from the protable Zambesi ivory and slave trade.
Given the exploitative economy of the prazo system, it is not surprising that
the Portuguese estate holders relied on military power to support their authority. That power, however, could not come from Portugal itself. Lisbon was
both unwilling and unable to station an effective colonial army in this frontier
region. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the number of
Portuguese soldiers stationed in the Zambesi usually ranged from one hundred to three hundred. They were poorly armed, poorly organized, and poorly
trained. Many were debtors, vagrants, and former convicts who had been
conscripted into the military. They deserted at the rst opportunity. A senior
ofcial acknowledged in 1825 that the colonial army was in a complete shambles. In all these districts, he wrote, there are fortications, and a garrison
consisting of a company of infantrymen, roughly eighty men including ofcers, but rarely are more than half present, and they are badly armed and
without discipline, and thus of little utility.
In the absence of an effective colonial army, the prazeiros recruited and
armed slaves. According to early accounts, it was not uncommon for such
powerful early prazeiros as Antnio Lobo da Silva (known by his African
name, Nhema) to own upwards of ve thousand slaves. His contemporaries,
Loureno de Mattos (Maponda) and Sisnando Bayo (Massuampaca), also
had large slave retinues. One estate owner was reputed to command an army
of fteen thousand captives. With these slave armies, estimated at around
fty thousand strong in the middle of the eighteenth century, the prazeiros
defeated a number of Sena, Tonga, and Tawara polities located on the southern margins of the Zambesi. They also made substantial inroads north of the

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Zambesi River, vanquishing several Chewa and Manganja polities by the end
of the seventeenth century. The conquered lands and the peasants who lived
on them were effectively incorporated into the prazo system.
There is no seventeenth-century documentation that refers to the military
slaves as Chikunda. The earliest explicit reference to the Chikunda dates from
a century later. In 1752 a Portuguese priest wrote that the respect and power
of the estate holders rests on their bazekunda under the direction of a slave
chief known as the mukazambo and a second in command called the sachikunda. A decade later, a prominent Zambesi settler was more explicit. The
Chikunda, he wrote, are our slaves. It is difcult to be more specic. But
this evidence suggests that, at least on some prazos, military slaves had forged
a sense of collective identity by the middle of the eighteenth century.
The time lapse between the formation of slave military regiments and the
creation of the name Chikunda highlights the difculties that slave soldiers undoubtedly faced in creating a common identity among themselves, for slaves
on the prazos were deeply divided by language and ancestry. Like military
slave-holders in other parts of the world, the prazeiros preferred to acquire
captives from distant regions rather than enslaving local peasants or acquiring
captives from nearby populations. As one descendant of a prominent prazeiro
family noted, In the beginning the Chikunda were not a tribe. They were a
mixture of people who came from far away. A detailed list of 659 male
slaves freed in the Tete area in 1856 highlights the ethnic heterogeneity of
the slave population. The captives came from twenty-one different ethnic
groups. The overwhelming majority, 83 percent, came from well outside the
prazo zone, from the matrilineal belt north of the Zambesi. The preponderance of captives from the north reects the political chaos in that region.
The decline of Undi, paramount ruler of the Chewa, set local land chiefs
against one another in competition for preeminence. The prazeiros took advantage, regularly attacking the divided Chewa and Manganja polities during
the seventeenth century. These raids intensied in the rst half of the nineteenth century, spurred by the dramatic increase in demand from Brazil. The
raids were an important source of slaves for the prazos. Other slaves came by
way of purchase. Most prazeiros regularly dispatched trading caravans to
areas known to have large numbers of captives available for sale. Young, easily
transportable boys commanded the highest price, since it was believed that
they could be easily trained in the martial arts and molded into the norms of
soldierly life. After the captives arrived at the estate, they were assigned to
slave soldiers squads, made household slaves or eld hands, or sold to the
slave market in Quelimane.
Many Africans thus became slaves involuntarily, through prazeiros raids or

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through capture and purchase at the hands of African chiefs. For some, however, selling themselves into military slavery was a strategy of economic survival in dangerous times. The regions low and unpredictable rainfall meant
that food shortages occurred with regularity. One eighteenth-century chronicler observed that the greatest part came to be captives from the times of
famine, pestilence and locusts and because of their urgent necessity they had
no alternative but to come and offer themselves as captives. The actual
process of self-enslavement varied. Sometimes it involved detailed negotiations in which the prazeiro pledged that the slave would never be sold outside
the prazo. At other times an impoverished man simply swore loyalty and
accepted the conditions that his protector imposed. Entering the ranks of the
Chikunda offered a number of advantages. In return for enlisting, the recruits
gained highly valued imported goods including cloth, beads, and guns. Others
received land, wives, and the right to hunt on the estates. To an unattached,
vulnerable individual, these benets held an obvious attraction.
Divided by language and ethnicity, divided also by their experiences of
enslavement, slave soldiers shared a similar mode of organization from one
estate to another. They were carefully set apart from the local peasant population, settled in villages located strategically throughout the prazo. These regimental villages were called butaka. According to the local historian Custdio
Chimalenzi, The Chikunda lived in distinct villages, separate from the local
population. They were organized into military villages. The peasants had their
own villages and they never mixed. Portuguese accounts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conrm this spatial separation. Each butaka
had a clearly dened political hierarchy, with a slave chief (mukazambo) exercising considerable authority over his soldiers lives. With the assistance of
a council of elders, the mukazambo distributed bounty received from the
prazeiro, allocated land and captives, punished members of his regiment who
violated local practices and laws, resolved disputes between his subordinates,
and administered the poison ordeal to any Chikunda suspected of practicing
witchcraft. During military campaigns many slave chiefs and their subordinates were permitted to take captives of their own. Even when the action of a
slave jeopardized the prazeiros position, responsibility for disciplining the
guilty party generally rested with the mukazambo. When, in 1783, a Chikunda slave ed prazo Inharuga with valuable trade goods belonging to the
estate owner, it was the slave chiefs who dispatched soldiers to capture the
runaway and ordered him chained and beaten.
Set apart by their economic and political privileges, Chikunda soldiers were
used by prazeiros as a means to control the often-restive peasant population.
Such was the reputation of the Chikunda that among the settlers it was taken as

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fact that twenty slaves could reduce one thousand colonos to complete and
perfect obedience. The prazeiros selected their most loyal slaves, called
chuanga (plural achuanga), to oversee the principal villages of their estates. The
achuanga were agents of the prazeiro, transmitting his orders to the land chiefs
and ensuring that they were followed. They recruited peasant labor to clear
roads, transport goods, and repair buildings on the estate. The chuanga personally resolved minor infractions committed by the villagers against the interests
of the prazeiro. Villagers who failed to give the estate holder a proper share of
meat of the animals they killed, for example, were punished by the chuanga.
For more serious infractions, the chuanga referred the case to the prazeiro
himself. In this way, the estate holder was informed of the activities of the
peasants and could take appropriate action to contain organized opposition.
The achuanga also supervised the collection of the annual tax that all peasants were required to pay. The exact content of this tax varied substantially
from prazo to prazo. One particularly knowledgeable observer noted that the
tribute extracted was directly proportional to the military power the prazeiro
possessed. Shortly before the harvest, the slave overseers, together with the
land chief and village headmen, took a census of all the households on the
estate. Each household had to pay the same amount, regardless of how much it
actually produced. For their loyalty, the achuanga received a portion of the
taxes, as did the land chief and his assistants. The achuanga also enforced the
commercial monopoly of the prazeiros, collecting sorghum, maize, and rice
from peasants at harvest time. Peasants referred to this practice as inhaucangamiza, or forced sale, since the prices they received for their goods from
the prazeiro were well below the market rates.
Controversies frequently arose over tax and tribute collection. If an entire
village failed to pay tax or refused to obey some other order of the prazeiro,
the estate owner dispatched a slave squad to deal with the miscreants. Chikunda slaves publicly punished tax evaders, sometimes beating them with
rhinoceros-hide whips. Other tax evaders were killed or enslaved along with
their families. Indigenous authorities suspected of encouraging acts of disobedience were subject to similar punishment. These harsh reprisals formed an
intrinsic part of the system of domination on the prazos. They created a deep
antipathy toward the alien Chikunda among the local peasant population.
Hoping to escape from the violent conditions on the prazos, many peasants
ran away, seeking sanctuary from neighboring chiefs or other prazeiros. Runaways had several options. They could jump fences and migrate to another
estate, or they could ee to a neighboring chieftaincy. Prazo holders, nervous
that peasants ight would undermine the viability of the estates, garrisoned
Chikunda squads at strategic points on the frontiers in order to thwart peas-

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ants escape. Chikunda soldiers were also used to quash peasant uprisings,
which regularly occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century. According to Jos da Costa Xavier, great-grandson of a prominent prazeiro, The
Chikunda helped put down revolts . . . but they did very little other work.
Insurrections seem to have been most common on the smaller estates, where
the prazeiros had only limited forces at their disposal, or on frontier estates,
where neighboring chiefs would ally themselves with rebellious peasants. The
Chikunda were of critical importance in suppressing these peasant uprisings.
The Chikunda were also of military importance in protecting the prazos
against external threats. In the highly competitive world of the Zambezi, a
strong military served as a necessary deterrent against attacks not only from
adjacent African polities but also from rival prazeiros. Some of the ercest
conicts occurred between estate holders trying to usurp the authority of their
neighbors and establish themselves as the dominant economic and political
power in the region. Periodic raids, full-scale battles, and prolonged wars were
recurring themes in interprazo relations.
In addition to their military role, the Chikunda performed a wide range
of economic activities that enhanced the wealth and power of their owners.
Caravans of Chikunda traders, porters, canoe men, and soldiers, ranging in
number from ten to several hundred men, traveled far into the interior exchanging imported cloth and beads for slaves, ivory, and gold. Their expeditions dealt primarily with the Chewa and Nsenga chieftaincies but went as far
north as the Lunda kingdom of Kazembe. Some lasted as long as eighteen
months. A trusted slave ofcial known as the musambadzi led the caravans,
determined the itinerary, and negotiated with local rulers. Because the Zambesi Valley was a tse-tse yinfested zone, pack animals could not be used to
transport goods into the interior. Slaves had to carry such heavy commodities as ivory, hippo teeth, and copper for great distances. The absence of roads
made their tasks more difcult, as did the rapids and the swollen rivers that the
caravans had to cross in the rainy season. Ofcial Portuguese accounts noted
the skill and daring of the canoe men who were not intimidated by the large
rocks jutting out of the Zambesi river north of Tete. In addition to the
natural barriers they confronted, there were the perils posed by hippopotami
and crocodiles and the threats posed by marauding bands of brigands. One
prazeiro lamented that it was rare indeed when one of the musambadzi was
not robbed or assassinated in the interior and the caravan returned safely.
The prazeiros also proted from slave soldiers skills as elephant hunters.
Chikunda hunters armed with spears, axes, half-moon scimitars, locally
made guns, and European muzzle-loaders took advantage of the large elephant herds north of the Zambesi. Oral traditions throughout the region

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recount the fearless way that the hunters incapacitated the elephants by cutting their hamstrings with axes and their skill as marksmen. Even those disdainful of the Chikunda because of their predatory activities acknowledged
that the Chikunda were the best hunters in the region; no one was better. In
the beginning they hunted with bows and arrow and spears. Later on they
began to use muskets. It was the great hunters who used muskets. Although
the prazeiros retained all the ivory, the hunters kept the elephant and hippo
meat, which they distributed throughout the slave community and exchanged
for grain with local peasants.
The multiple functions that the Chikunda performed highlight how closely
military slavery, economic production, and political consolidation were linked
on the prazos. In an unstable social and political context, the Chikunda were
for estate holders a means of controlling the peasants living on the estates.
Chikunda also produced wealth for the slave owners by means of hunting, slave
raiding, and trading. Military slavery was an engine of economic production
and a means of producing and solidifying prazeiros privileged class position.
Their work demanded a rare courage and skill of slave soldiers. Asked to
perform highly dangerous tasks, bound together by their common experience
as skilled traders and adventurers, military slaves elaborated a culture that
celebrated daring, valor, and military discipline. How and why military slaves
became Chikunda is the subject of the next section.

Making the Chikunda

Uprooted from their natal linguistic and cultural communities, rstgeneration slave soldiers experienced a type of social death. Enslavement
involved the loss of slaves identity. Coming to think of themselves as Chikunda was probably difcult: the captives were divided by language and ancestry. Their internal divisions probably made the creation of a common identity all the more urgent. The political economy and social structure of the
prazos ensured that slaves could not easily blend in to peasant communities.
Their work as tax collectors, overseers, and police earned them the hostility of
the peasant population. And as renowned hunters and traders, the slaves
had access to imported goods, which reinforced their differences with the
peasantry.
But a sense of difference did not in itself create the Chikunda. Creating a
common identity required intellectual and social work of slave soldiers. Over
time, they created a distinctive set of rituals and practices that valorized courage and denigrated weakness and inconstancy. Making themselves Chikunda
the conquerorswas for slave soldiers a way to celebrate the hard work

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they did, making it seem honorable and socially meaningful. Crafting Chikunda identity was also a strategy of social differentiation, a way, that is, for
proud soldiers to set themselves off from the peasants around them.
The term Chikunda is derived from the Shona verb kukunda, which signies
to vanquish. Their military work was one means by which Chikunda
identied themselves. Despite the fact that most rst-generation slaves came
from farming communities, Chikunda regarded agricultural work with disdain. To farm would have reduced them to the level of a common eld slave or
a subjugated peasant. As one Chikunda descendant remembered, our grandfathers hated to work in the elds. Ofcial Portuguese accounts conrmed
this aversion to farming. The Chikunda had therefore to rely on the peasants
living on the estates for much of the grain they ate and the beer they consumed.
The slaves acquired these foodstuffs by levying taxes on peasants or by exchanging meat for peasants grain. The wives of the soldiers cultivated small
elds, sometimes with the aid of captives, to supplement the agricultural produce extracted from the local villages. From the earliest days on the prazos, a
clearly dened gendered division of labor marked Chikunda communities.
Farming was womens work. Hunting, commerce, and warfare constituted the
domain of Chikunda men.
Their disdain for agricultureas womens workwas for male slave soldiers a means of setting themselves off from the peasant farmers alongside
whom they lived. The new gendered division of labor also reected radical
shifts within the social organization of slave soldiers families. One of the
dening features of the new Chikunda communities was the organization of
slave families around a patrilineal system of descent. Most captives had originally come from matrilineal peoples living north of the Zambesi. In their home
villages to the north, husbands lived with their wives relatives, maternal uncles exercised domestic authority over a mans children, and the familys property was controlled by the wifes lineage. Men and women had taken part in
farming activities. Female ancestors were central gures to northerners religious lives: the Chewa, for example, propitiated Makewana, the Wife of the
Spirit, and recognized female ancestor spirits.
Slave soldiers adoption of patrilineality was therefore a radical change
from inherited practice. They probably had little choice in the matter. Living
and working with their male comrades-in-arms in the prazeiros service, slave
soldiers could scarcely ask their owners for leave to live in their wives natal
homes. One elder whose ancestors lived on prazo Massangano explained the
dynamics of patrilineality very simply. The Chikunda children could not
leave; they stayed and remained Chikunda. Patrilineality gave permanence
to new Chikunda communities. Wives were brought back to their husbands

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village, creating new patrilocal residence patterns. Over time a patrilineal

extended family emerged. Land, property, and familial identity were all transmitted through the male line.
If becoming Chikunda meant reworking kin relations and inheritance, it
also meant rethinking the past. New patterns of ancestor veneration dignied
patrilineal slave households with a local, male-centered history. The Chikunda
no longer invoked the spirit of their distant ancestors but instead sought the
assistance of their predecessors who had died on the prazos. They began to
collectively pay homage to the local lion spirits, the mhondoro, who were the
patrilineal spiritual guardians in the territory in which they now resided. The
slaves invoked the mhondoro to insure extranatural protection during battle
and before hunting dangerous animals. They also propitiated the lion spirit
to guarantee the fertility of their wives and their land. These religious innovations were a necessity for a people cut off from home. The Chikunda always
consulted the mhondoro of the area, explained Custdio Chimalizeni. They
all had to adopt the local mhondoro because they had come from a variety of
people who lived far away. The Chikunda consulted the mhondoro because
the mhondoro had the power to tell them where the enemy was and what
dangers they faced.
Bound together by a new set of ancestors, the Chikunda elaborated markers of social identity with which to distinguish themselves from peasants. In
their households, communities, and military regiments the slaves spoke ChiChikunda. As the local historian Conrado Msussa Boroma put it, The language of the Chikunda is a language without a land. It is a mixture of Atawara,
Azimba, Makanga, Quelimane, Atonga, and Barue, each slave brought a little
with him. Although a detailed historical linguistic analysis still needs to be
undertaken, the evidence suggests that their language was based on a substantial number of cognates introduced by slaves from the north together with
Chi-Sena, Chi-Tonga, and Chi-Tawara terms borrowed from the peasants
living on the prazos. The relatively large number of Portuguese greetings and
expressions of deference incorporated into the language called attention to
slaves proximity to the estate owners and involvement in the larger world of
the Zambesi. As a language without a land, Chi-Chikunda helped bind
uprooted slaves together as members of a common cultural and intellectual
community. Their speech differentiated them from the peasant population of
the prazos. When Chikunda greeted each other they saluted, shufed their feet
in a differential manner and declared in their best Portuguese, bom dia.
This greeting was called kukwenga. They made no such gestures when they
encountered peasants, who, by contrast, were expected to clap their hands as a
mark of deference whenever they came upon a Chikunda man.

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Portuguese greetings were a mark of social superiority, a way to set soldiers

off from peasants. So, too, did their bodily markings help dene Chikunda
identity. Men and women had a unique set of facial tattoos known as makaju.
Makaju served as an afrmation of Chikunda superiority over the local population. As Diamond Mpande explained, The reason that we had the makaju
was to show others that we were the Chikunda. In that way we differentiated
ourselves from other people. But the makaju were more than social markers. They also afrmed Chikunda successes as soldiers. As one Tete elder put
it, Originally, when the Chikunda came to the prazos, they did not have
makaju. The makaju developed out of warfare. It became a symbol of their
position as warriors and distinguished them from the other people. The
Chikunda also led their front teeth, reinforcing their menacing appearance.
Our ancestors did this, explained Diamond Mpande, so that they looked
different from the local people and so that all the other people knew that we
are all Chikunda. Their erce appearance was an integral part of Chikunda
identity.
Clothing was another marker of status and power on the prazos. Because of
their success as ivory hunters, slave raiders, and long-distance traders, the
Chikunda received bolts of calico cloth, called kapundu, from estate holders
as a reward for their labors. Calico became their standard dress, a uniform
that they aunted. Chikunda men wore kapundu in the old days, remembered one old man. It was a white cloth worn over a smaller undergarment.
Some also wore a sleeveless tunic. Chikunda women dressed in blouses
made from calico. Their attire set them apart from peasants living on the
prazos. Most peasants wore mkuende, explained Castro Jack. The women
removed the bark from a tree, took the ber, washed it in water to make it soft,
and made clothing called mkuende. Others wore mphalame, which were animal skins.
Their clothing publicized slave soldiers ability to negotiate the difcult
work of trading. Their mythology and dances similarly celebrated Chikunda
mens valor. Soldiers return from a successful military operation or hunting
expedition was the occasion for great celebration. A British traveler passing
through the Tete region in the middle of the nineteenth century described one
such performance. Here forms a double ring of fty or sixty men, in each
hand a bullocks horn, clashing them in unison to the stroke of one supple and
lithe-limbed native, who springing into the center, leaps nearly his own height
from the ground. . . . Not far from them, single dancers are weighing against
each other, brandishing their weapons, muskets, assegai, battle axes, or bow
and arrows, and achieving pirouettes that would open the eyes of some of
our ballet dancers. In another place is a circle of women performing a more

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measured dance. Chikunda celebrated their daring in public dances such as

these. Their performance of military skills in dances publicized their courage,
concretizing their military work as a virtue to be admired.
Clothing, dancing, language, and bodily markings celebrated slave soldiers
dangerous lives, joining them in the common pursuit of honor through military service. Initiation rituals were the means by which slaves learned to value
military service as an honorable occupation. Boys learned from male elders,
grandparents, and specialists known as tsanculu. They recounted the military
and hunting exploits of their ancestors in evening discussions around the
campre and in Chikunda pre-puberty schools. Custdio Chimalenzi described how young captives were educated. The original Chikunda elders
formally taught the Chikunda offspring. The boys who were born into slavery
had to be taught what their responsibilities werehow to make war and
defend the prazos. There was a special hut in which they were taught, where
they built a re and sat around during the night discussing things. The children
would sit around the re and learn. Once they nished their schooling the
young men had their faces tattooed. They were then deemed ready for military
service and marriage.
Girls underwent a parallel process of socialization at a somewhat earlier
age. Sitting under large trees in their village, they learned from elderly women,
who trained them to cook, keep house, make mats and pots, and perform
domestic labor. They also stressed the importance of celibacy until the girls
had completed rites of initiation and became adults. One older woman described the initiation schooling: The old woman taught the girl how to sleep
with her husband, what she should do when he came to her. Since you are
going to sleep with your husband, you must demonstrate your love for him.
You must also help him to know how to make love with you. You have to
gyrate your hips. Later, you must take a small cloth and wipe his penis, wash
his feet, and stretch his toes and ngers. Then you rise and give thanks by
clapping your hands and bending your knees up and down three times.
Once the Chikunda girls had completed initiation school, they went to the
home of an elderly woman, where they pounded corn and performed other
domestic chores. It was here that their faces were cut with makaju. Later, the
young women returned to have additional incisions made on their necks,
breasts, and thighs, which enhanced their beauty and sexuality.
The very different education that boys and girls received underscores the
inextricable relation between gender and Chikunda ethnicity. Being Chikunda
demanded discipline, self-sacrice, and courage of men and domestic labor of
women. This conclusion is not meant to minimize disputes within Chikunda
households and communities: women may well have argued for a different

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109

division of labor. But the contrasting masculine and feminine roles taught at
initiation schools does highlight how Chikunda men idealized their ethnicity
by concretizing gender roles. Military men, adventurers on untamed frontiers,
Chikunda men proved their virtue by their courage and daring.
Despite their success in forging a group identity and acquiring a modicum of
power and wealth, one social fact remained unchangedthe Chikunda were
slaves, unable to choose their own place of residence or dispose of their property. Moreover, the Chikunda lived and worked in a highly regimented and
coercive labor regime. Estate owners brutally punished slaves whom they
considered to be disloyal or disobedient: ogging with a hippopotamus-hide
whip was common practice. Perpetrators of more serious offenses were blown
out of the mouth of a cannon. The well-armed Chikunda, however, were not
simply pliable tools in the hands of their masters. The prazeiros were terried
that the slave soldiers would rebel. They had good reason to worry. The
historical record is lled with examples of Chikunda who rebelled against
estate holders either who failed to provide sufcient patronage or who excessively exploited their positions. Some Chikunda were prepared to defend their privileged position on the prazos. Others, faced with a particularly
rapacious or abusive master, chose to run away. By the middle of the eighteenth century the problem of slave ight was serious enough that the estate
holders began a series of military campaigns to punish Chewa and Manganja
chiefs who provided sanctuary to runaways. Other runaway slaves established communities in the hinterland. They posed a serious challenge to
the Portuguese, both because they offered refuge to other slaves and because
they had the military capacity to threaten outlying prazos. By 1806 an ofcial census of the prazos listed almost half of the twenty thousand slaves as
missing. Among those missing were Chikunda porters, traders, and elephant hunters.
The always-volatile relationship between the Chikunda and the prazeiros
came to a head in the rst half of the nineteenth century. Made greedy by the
ever-increasing demand for slaves from Brazilian and Cuban sugar plantations, prazeiros began selling both peasants and Chikunda as slaves. Their
violation of the time-honored practice forbidding prazeiros from selling the
Chikunda or their family members precipitated wide-scale insurrections and
ight. One local functionary attributed this state of affairs to the inability of
the prazeiros to comprehend the ramications of the slave trade. This political instability, combined with recurring droughts and locust infestations, led
to a dramatic decline in the agricultural production of the estates. Successive
invasions by the Barue and the Nguni in the second quarter of the century
sealed the fate of the prazo system. During the 1830s, invading Nguni forces

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occupied twenty-eight of the forty-six legally functioning prazos. By the

middle of the nineteenth century most of the prazos were in disarray. One
ofcial lamented that the estates are abandoned as a result of the prazeiros
blind lust for prots. The rapid disintegration of the prazos left thousands
of Chikunda unattached. Lisbons 1858 abolition decree set the remainder
free over the course of the ensuing two decades.
The prazos had been the crucible of Chikunda identity. Slave soldiers became Chikunda in order to dignify their lives of danger. The collapse of the
prazos compelled Chikunda, no longer legally bound as slaves, to rethink their
identity. Some left their military lives behind, eeing the prazos and returning
to their homelands to become peasants. Some became freelance elephant hunters or worked in that capacity for inland Portuguese traders. Still others labored as porters and canoe men in the service of the merchant community.
Most, however, were incorporated into new slave-raiding Chikunda states
formed in the wake of the prazos collapse.

Chikunda Conquest States

The nineteenth century was a time of political instability throughout
eastern and southern Africa. The social unrest caused by the continuing slave
trade, combined with recurring ecological crises and massive migrations of
people, undermined older polities and opened up opportunities for political
entrepreneurs. It was in this political context that Chikunda ex-slaves, eager to
exercise the skills of hunting and ghting learned on the prazos, established
slave-trading conquest states to the north of the Zambesi. Jos Rosrio de
Andrade, more commonly known by his African name, Kanyemba (the ferocious), was perhaps the most successful of the warlords who dominated the
Zambesi interior (see map 2). Son of a Tande chief and a Goan mother,
Kanyemba began forming a private army in Tete in the 1870s. Many of the enlistees were Chikunda ex-slaves, some elephant hunters, all of them young and
impoverished males. Joining Kanyemba offered them an avenue to us their
military skills for prot. Kanyemba and his followers settled in the elephantrich region of Bawa, about two hundred kilometers east of the trading center
at Tete. Over the next quarter of a century, the well-armed Chikunda ravaged
a vast area of south central Africa. Frederick Selous observed that Kanyembas forces were constantly making raids upon any people in the [interior] who have anything to be taken. Elders throughout the region made
a similar point: Kanyemba never traded freely with the local peoples for
slaves, remembered Sunda Mwanza. He forced them to sell slaves. If they
refused he ordered his Chikunda warriors to raid the villages, kill all the

Map 2. Chikunda Conquest States, ca. 1880

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Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson

elderly men and bring the young men and women back to his stockade. Because of Kanyembas raids people on both sides [of the Zambesi River,] the
Tande, Tonga and the Nsenga of Mbuluma, lived in fear.
By the 1880s, the warlord had forged a powerful conquest state that was the
equal of any in south central Africa. His state was modeled on the prazos,
which were for Kanyemba a template of political and military organization.
One observer estimated that he had ten thousand Chikunda soldiers under
arms. Chikunda regiments were billeted in strategic locations along the borders, near the principal population centers, and at the capital. Kanyembas
fortied village at Chipera housed several hundred Chikunda warriors, had
large warehouses with arms and ammunition, and even contained a jail for
slaves awaiting export to the coast. Chikunda agents collected taxes from
peasants, transmitted orders from Kanyemba, and enforced the warlords monopoly on commerce. These were the same types of activities performed by the
chuanga and his Chikunda regiment centuries earlier, on the prazos of the
lower Zambesi.
The parallels between Kanyembas conquest state and the prazos highlights
how deeply their shared history shaped the political imagination of the Chikunda. At Bawa and in other nineteenth-century conquest states, ex-slave
soldiers used the markers of communal identity forged on the prazos to found
a self-reproducing Chikunda ethnicity. The core group of ex-slaves brought a
shared set of practices and rituals to Bawa. These practices distinguished the
Chikunda immigrants from the new recruits and the local subject population.
Slaves and others who joined Kanyembas polity adopted these markers of
Chikunda identity. This process of cultural integration was easiest for the
female captives whom Kanyemba distributed throughout the ranks of his
military. Because most of his followers had come to Bawa without wives,
spouses were essential to the long-term survival of the Chikunda enclave.
Whatever their origin, these women always went to live in their husbands
village. If still young, they underwent Chikunda rites of initiation in which the
makaju was tattooed on their faces and their front teeth were led. Cut off
from their natal societies and incorporated into a new set of social networks,
over time they discarded their former diverse identities and became Chikunda.
Their children were always brought up as Chikunda. The offspring of free
women who married Chikunda also adopted their fathers ethnic identity.
My mother was Nsenga, recalled Vena Dixon, but I am Chikunda because
my father was Chikunda.
Because of the patrilineal practices of the Chikunda, the assimilation of male
slaves married to Chikunda women was more problematic. Many captives,
especially if they were older, retained the identity they brought with them.

Making the Chikunda

113

Others, immersed in a new world, gradually became Chikunda. Emma Sinturau described the ethnicity of her family in this way: My fathers father was a
Lamba from far away. He was sold to Kanyembas clan Abreu. I am a Chikunda. My grandfather was the only one who was a Lamba. He settled here and
married and had children. When my grandfather came here, he stopped speaking his own language and started speaking Chikunda. My father was born here
and became a Chikunda and so are all his children. Although the details
of their fathers autobiographies varied, one social fact remained constant
the offspring of mixed marriages between strangers and Chikunda women
adopted their mothers ethnic identity. That children of Chikunda mothers
regularly became Chikundaignoring the ethnicity of the fatherhighlights
the radically incorporative nature of Chikunda identity. Becoming Chikunda
was a way that outsiders, women, and children identied themselves as loyalists of the warlords conquest state. Initiation practices among the ex-slaves in
Zimbabwe seem to have stressed the open quality of Chikunda ethnicity. As
Willie Payson remembered: The elders taught the children at the initiation
school . . . the culture of being Chikunda, the story of how they came to be
Chikunda, how the Chikunda came from the other side [Tete] and conquered
the people here, and how the many tribes whom they defeated became Chikunda. They stressed how the Tande, Tawara, Tonga and Nsenga were initially
not Chikunda, but after they were conquered they all came to call themselves
Chikunda. These ideas and a sense of pride in being Chikunda were passed on
from father to sons, and when the fathers died and their sons grew up, the latter
passed on to their sons a pride in being Chikunda.
These history lessons encouraged diverse groups of slaves, women, and
children to think of themselves as Chikunda. As they learned to be Chikunda,
outsiders also learned new languages. Chikunda dialect was quite different
from the local Shona languages. These differences survived until the twentieth
century: in 1917, one villager complained: They were ChikundaI knew by
the way they spoke. In appearance, too, Kanyembas Chikunda were easily
distinguished from both the subject populations and the recent conscripts.
Whereas the latter dressed in a locally woven bark-cloth, Chikunda men were
clad in imported calico cloth that they draped about their waists. Their wives
also wore calico. Dress marked Chikunda identity. So did the makaju, with
which slaves and others who were initiated as Chikunda were tattooed. Willie
Payson stressed that the makaju set boundaries between Kanyembas partisans
and Atande peasants: What distinguished our Chikunda ancestors from the
Atande was the makaju. The makaju said that a person was Chikunda. Our
ancestors had three marksone on their foreheads and one on each cheek.
The makaju was like a uniform of a soldier. It signied that the person was a

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Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson

warrior. When Kanyemba came with his soldiers they had the makaju on their
face. There was more than good looks at stake. Through facial tattoos,
schooling, and language instruction, ex-slaves made newcomers Chikunda.
This status had once been a means by which military slaves on the prazos
distinguished themselves from peasants and dignied their dangerous work.
Under Kanyemba and other warlords, the marks of slaves identity became a
basis for political unication. Ex-slaves used their shared vocabulary of identity in order to incorporate strange women, men, and children. At Bawa, in
other words, ex-slaves enlarged Chikunda identity in order to create and consolidate an ethnicity, a shared political community.
The nal stage in the transformation of the Chikunda from descendants of
slave soldiers to an ethnic group was Kanyembas death and reinvention as a
mhondoro. Mhondoro are guardians of the land, spirits in whom the lives of
dead chiefs and rulers continue. When properly propitiated, they bring rain
and health to their descendants. Chikunda remember that Kanyemba took
special medicines to ensure that, after his death, he would be transformed into
a mhondoro. He died in the last years of the nineteenth century. After his
death, a young boy from Chipoto named Alimao manifested Kanyembas
spirit. The young boy remained Kanyembas medium for many years, until he
was an elderly man who used a walking stick. After Alimao passed
away, Kanyembas spirit found refuge in a lion and, some time thereafter,
entered the body of a woman named Joaquina. After she was recognized as
Kanyembas earthly medium, she settled in his village at Bawa and lived there
at least until 1997.
With their own mhondoro, the Chikunda gained ritual security over their
new homeland. As a mhondoro, Kanyemba had the power to bring the rain,
ensure the fertility of the land, aid the hunters, and protect the warriors.
Chikunda venerated him as a means of ensuring prosperity: After our ancestors gathered the crops they brewed beer and brought it to him, explained
Carlos Chicandari. They then danced and thanked him for the good harvest.
Before hunters [and soldiers] left they informed Kanyembas spirit and asked
Kanyemba to protect them in the bush and ensure a good hunt. If they failed to
do so they would not be successful. When they returned they immediately
brought meat to Kanyemba.
We have argued that Chikunda identity was a historical innovation, crafted by
military slaves on the prazos. In the late nineteenth century, ex-slaves expanded
the markers of their identity to found a Chikunda ethnicity. For Kanyemba and
his partisans this was a strategy of incorporation, a way of integrating slaves,
women, and others as members of a cohesive citizenry. Imagining themselves

Making the Chikunda

115

as Chikunda, children of common ancestors and followers of shared mhondoro, was also a way for ex-slaves to gain ritual security over the land.
Kanyembas state did not survive colonization. In 188485, the Congress of
Berlin decreed that European states wishing to establish colonial empires in
Africa had to demonstrate effective occupation of the regions they claimed.
Worried by reports that Kanyemba and other Chikunda warlords were secretly negotiating with the British, the Portuguese began a lengthy military
campaign to subjugate them in the 1890s. Chikunda loyalists fought hard, but
by 1903, the bulk of the Chikunda armies had been forced to surrender.
Despite the defeat of the conquest states, Chikunda identity was preserved
and reproduced in remote communities at the conuence of the Zambezi and
Luangwa Rivers. There the descendants of Kanyemba and several of the other
warlords became colonial chiefs, sanctioned by British and Portuguese authorities. To this date many descendants of the ex-slaves live in Chikunda communities in the backwater regions along the Mozambican-Zambian-Zimbabwe
frontier. Though disarmed long ago, they still sing the praise of the great
warrior hunters, recall in rich detail the exploits and abuses of their warlord
chiefs, and greet each other with the traditional military salutes. They take
pride in the fact that Chikunda meant victors.

Notes
1. Max Weber, A Theory of Social and Political Organization, trans. A. Henderson
(New York, 1947).
2. David Ayalon, Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (London, 1994). For another Weberian analysis, see Allan R. Meyers, The Abid
al-Buhari: Slave Soldiers and Statecraft in Morocco, 16721790 (Ph.D. diss., Cornell
University, 1974).
3. Daniel Pipes, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military Institution (New
Haven, 1981), 91.
4. For what might be done, see Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labor Market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, UK, 1990).
Kolff studied the naukari culture of military labor migrants from northern India. Through
courage, discipline, and self-sacrice, naukari songs promised, young men would earn the
right to marry. Joined in the common pursuit of honor, military labor migrants created a
distinct Rajput caste that celebrated physical valor, strength, and courage. The Rajputs
were never slaves. But their history highlights how military service could fuel the moral
and political imagination of soldiers.
5. This term is derived from Bill Bravman, Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and
Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 18001950 (Portsmouth, 1998), 5.
6. Lamin Sanneh, Islamic Slavery in African Perspective, in Slaves and Slavery in
Muslim Africa, ed. J. R. Willis (London, 1985).

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7. Robin Law, The Oyo Empire, c. 1600c. 1836: A West African Imperialism in the
Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1977).
8. Roberta Ann Dunbar, Slavery and the Evolution of Nineteenth-Century Damagaram, in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne
Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977).
9. Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Comrades in Arms or Captives in Bondage: Sudanese
Slaves in the Turco-Egyptian Army, 18201865, in Slave Elites in the Middle East and
Africa, ed. Miura Toru and John Edward Philips (London, 2000).
10. Martin Klein, Servitude Among the Wolof and Sereer of Senegambia, in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor
Kopytoff (Madison, 1977).
11. See Martin Klein, Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolutions in
Senegambia, Journal of African History 13 (1972): 41941.
12. Arab and Swahili planters on the East African coast did use armed slaves to
oversee the captives who worked on their elds. See Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery
on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven, 1977), 172.
13. Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, The Prazeiros as Transfrontiersmen: A
Study in Social and Cultural Change, International Journal of African Historical Studies
8 (1975): 139.
14. Arquivo Histrico Ultramarino [A.H.U.], Mo., Cx. 9, Marco Antnio de Azevedo Coutinho de Montaur to Pedro de Saldanha de Albuquerque, January 20, 1763;
A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 38, Lus Pinto de Souza, October 27, 1796; A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 31,
Manoel Baptista Coutinho, 1795.
15. Sebastio Xavier Botelho, Memria Estatstica sobre os Domnios Portuguezes na
frica Oriental (Lisbon, 1835), 50.
16. Biblioteca Pblica de Ajuda [Ajuda], 51-V1-24, no. 67, fol. 290, Tres Papeis
feitos pellos Mouros em Frana sobre os Rios de Cuama e sobre ndia, unsigned, 1667.
17. Allen Isaacman, Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution: The
Zambezi Prazos, 17501902 (Madison, 1972), 19.
18. Miranda estimated that on forty-one of the more than ninety estates there were
thirty-four thousand slaves. Arquivo Nacional de Torre de Tombo [A.N.T.T.], Ministrio
do Reino, Mao 604, Memria Sobre a Costa de frica, Antnio Pinto de Miranda,
undated, 3653.
19. M. D. D. Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi (New York, 1973).
20. A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 3, Fr. Fernando Jsus, M.A., April 13, 1752.
21. A.N.T.T., Ministrio do Reino, Mao 604, Antnio Pinto de Miranda, Memria
sobre a Costa de frica, 79.
22. Interview with Ricardo Ferro et al., Tete, Mozambique, October 22, 1997.
23. Arquivo Histrio de Moambique [A.H.M.], Cdice 2-1167, bk. 1, fols. 158,
Registo dos Libertos do Distrito da Villa de Tete, unsigned, 1856.
24. See Isaacman, Mozambique, 95113.
25. Ibid., 9293.
26. A. C. Gamitto, Escravatura na frica Oriental, Archivo Pittoresco 2 (1859):
370.
27. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff argue that slavery was one among a variety of

Making the Chikunda

117

options that Africans used to ameliorate difcult economic situations. See Kopytoff and
Miers, African Slavery as an Institution of Marginality, in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison,
1977).
28. A.N.T.T., Ministrio do Reino, Mao 604, Memria sobre a Costa de frica,
Antnio Pinto de Miranda, n.d.
29. A. C. Gamitto, King Kazembe (Lisbon, 1960), 2:145.
30. Jos Fernandes Jr. Narrao do Distrito de Tete (unpublished manuscript, Makanga, 1955), 3; Gamitto, Escravatura, 399; A.H.U., Cdice 1452, Joo Bonifcio
Alves da Silva to Sebastio Xavier Botelho.
31. Interview with Custdio Lus Gonzaga Chimalizeni, Tete, Mozambique, October
10, 1997.
32. Gamitto, King Kazembe, 1:36.
33. A.N.T.T., Ministrio do Reino, Mao 604, Antnio Pinto de Miranda, Memria
Sobre a Costa de frica, n.d., 55.
34. A.H.U., Fr. Fernando Jsus, M.A., April 13, 1752; Gamitto, Escravatura; interview with Chale Lupia, Massangano, Mozambique, September 28, 1968.
35. A.H.U., Cx. 20, Joz Manuel Pinteira, January 20, 1783.
36. A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 3, unsigned, undated.
37. A. C. Gamitto, Prazos da Coroa em Rios de Sena, Archivo Pittoresco 1
(1857): 62.
38. A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 34, Francisco Jos Lacerda e Almeida, March 22, 1798;
A.H.M., Fundo do Sculo XIX, Quelimane, Cdice 2-266, Fd. 3, fols. 1719, Joo de
Souza Machado et al., Acta da Sesso do Concelho do Governo, May 30, 1842;
A.H.U., Cdice 1758, fol. 156, Custdio Jos da Silva to Jos Maria Pereira, July 24,
1859; interview with Jos Antnio, Cheringoma, Mozambique, September 7, 1968; interview with Sete Marqueza, Gente Reno, and Quembo Pangacha, Caia, Mozambique,
September 4, 1968.
39. Interview with Jos da Costa Xavier, Tete, Mozambique, July 22, 1968.
40. Francisco de Mello de Castro, Descrio dos Rios de Senna, Anno de 1751 (Lisbon, 1861), 21; Manuel Galvo da Silva, Dirio ou Relao das Viagens Filoscas, nos
Terras da Jurisdio de Tete e Algumas dos Maraves, in Anais de Junta de Investigaes
do Ultramar 9, tomo 1 (Lisbon, 1954), 31719; A.N.T.T., Mao 604, Lus Antnio de
Figuerido, Notcias do Continente de Moambique Abbreviada Relao do Seu Commrcio, December 1, 1788.
41. Biblioteca Pblica de Ajuda [Ajuda] 52-x-2, no. 3, Jos Francisco Alves Barbosa,
Analyse Estatstica, December 30, 1821.
42. Ibid.
43. A.N.T.T., Ministrio do Reino, Mao 604, Diego Guerreiro de Aboime, August
27, 1779.
44. Interview with Castro Amoda Jack et al., Tete, Mozambique, October 21, 1997.
45. See Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA, 1982).
46. Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, 187203; Isaacman, Mozambique, 3242.
47. Interview with Joo Alfai, Chioco, Mozambique, July 26, 1968; interview with
Sete Marqueza, Degue, Mozambique, July 27, 1968.

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48. Interview with Kapurika, Guta, Zimbabwe, January 10, 1973.

49. A.H.U., Cx. 28, Lus de Souza Ferrez de Moura, August 2, 1794; A. N. de B.
Truo, Estatsticas da Capitania dos Rios de Sena no Anno de 1806 (Lisbon, 1889), 12.
50. Gamitto, Escravatura, 399; interview with Castro Amada Jack; interview with
Ricardo Antnio Ferro et al.
51. See Matthew Schoffeleers, The History and Political Role of the MBona Cult
Among the Manganja, in The Historical Study of African Religion, ed. Terrence Ranger
and I. Kimambo (Berkeley, 1972).
52. Interview with Chale Lupia.
53. Interview with Custdio Lus Gonzaga Chimalizeni; interview with Castro Amoda
Jack et al.; interview with Ricardo Antnio Ferro et al.
54. Interview with Custdio Lus Gonzaga Chimalizeni.
55. Interview with Conrado Msussa Boroma, Mozambique, July 28, 1968. For a
preliminary discussion, see J. R. dos Santos Jr., Contribuio para o Estudo da Antropologia de Moambique (Lisbon, 1944), 2:24778.
56. Antnio Rita Ferreira, Estudos, Ensaios e Documentos (Lisbon, 1958), 52.
57. Isaacman, Mozambique, 66; interview with Amissi Sokire et al., Nhaufa, Malawi,
October 21, 1997.
58. Interview with Diamond Mpande, Bawa, Mozambique, September 24, 1997.
59. Interview with Custdio Lus Gonzaga Chimalizeni.
60. Interview with Diamond Mpande.
61. Interview with Amissi Sokire et al.
62. Interview with Castro Amoda Jack et al.
63. Interview with Tiyago Matega, Chausa, Zambia, February 18, 1974.
64. E. C. Tabler, ed., Baines on the Zambezi, 1858 to 1859 (Johannesburg, 1982),
214.
65. Interview with Custdio Lus Gonzaga Chimalizeni.
66. Interview with Chale Lupia.
67. Interview with Vena Dixon et al., Bawa, Mozambique, September 20, 1997.
68. Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, 190.
69. A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 3, Fr. Fernando Jess, M.A., April 1, 1752; Cx. 16, D. Diego
Antnio de Barros Sotto Mayor, August 1, 1780; A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 31, Manuel Ribeira
de Sousa, January 7, 1795; A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 42, Joo Felipe de Carvalho, May 28,
1803; A.H.U., Mo., Cdice 1452, Joo Bonifcio Alves da Sa to Francisco Henrique
Ferro, January 10, 1827.
70. A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 5, Antnio Martins, undated; A.H.U., Mo., Cx. 5, Antnio
Gomes Macho, December 1, 1756; A.H.U., Mo., Cdice 1314, fol. 34, D. Manoel
Antnio de Almeida to Francisco de Mello de Castro, July 9, 1757; Newitt, Portuguese
Settlement, 201.
71. National Archives of Zimbabwe (N.A.Z.), LI1/1/1, David Livingstone to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, September 9, 1858; Francisco Raimundo Moraes Pereira, Journey Made Overland from Quelimane to Angoche in 1752, trans. and ed. M. D.
D. Newitt (Salisbury, 1965), 27.
72. Truo, Estatsticas, 10; Botelho, Memria, 266; Livingstone, Expedition, 37; F. C.
de Lacerda e Almeida, Travessia de frica (Lisbon, 1938), 106.

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119

73. A.H.U., Mo., Mao 10, Manoel Joaquim Mendes de Vasconcelos e Cirne to
Conde de Brito, December 7, 1827; A.H.U., Cdice 1315, Manoel Joaquim Mendes de
Vasconcellos e Cirne, 1830; David Livingstone, Missionary Travels (New York, 1858),
63031.
74. Isaacman, Mozambique, 116, n. 9.
75. A.H.U., Cdice 1315, fol. 37, Francisco Henriques Ferro to Comandante de Tete,
December 10, 1829; A.H.U. Mo., Mao 8, Joz Miguel de Brito, July 18, 1830.
76. Isaacman, Mozambique, 116, n. 7.
77. For a discussion of these warlords see Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, 295311.
78. Interview with Maoso Sejunga, Bawa, Mozambique, September 21, 1997.
79. A.H.M., Fundo do Seculo XIX, Distrito de Zumbo, Capitania Mor
de Zumbo,
Cx. 8-3 M1 (28), Agostinho de Oliveira Bareto and Joaquim de Mendona to Capito
Mor
das Terras de Zumbo, November 15, 1887; A.H.M., SEAV 1, no. 44 (ac), Padre
Dialer S. J. Lus Gonzaga, Costumes e Histria do Zumbo e Miruru, 1909; F. Selous, A
Hunters Wandering in Africa (Bulawayo, 1970), 295317; C. Weise, Expedition in East
Central Africa, 18881891, ed. H. W. Langworthy (Norman, 1983), 121, 190.
80. Selous, Hunters Wandering, 298.
81. Interview with Sunda Mwanza, Feira, Zambia, August 2, 1974.
82. W. Montagu-Kerr, The Far Interior (Boston, 1886), 46.
83. Interview with Tiyago Matega; A.H.M., Fundo do Sculo XIX, Governo Geral,
Cx. 11, Theodrio Francisco Diaz to Governador de Tete, undated.
84. Interview with Vena Dixon et al.; inteview with Carlos Chicandari, Bawa, Mozambique, September 22, 1977.
85. Interview with Maoso Sejunga; interview with Vena Dixon et al.
86. Interview with Vena Dixon et al.
87. Interview with Carlos Chicandari.
88. Interview with Emma Sinturau, Bawa, Mozambique, September 23, 1997.
89. Interview with Willie Payson et al., Bawa, Mozambique, September 27, 1997.
90. N.A.Z., A3/18/38/1-4, Statement of Gomo, witnessed by C. F. Molyneux, October 16, 1917.
91. Interview with Diamond Mpande.
92. Interview with Willie Payson et al.
93. Interview with Diamond Mpande; interview with Willie Payson; interview with
Carlos Chicandari; interview with Maoso Sejunga; interview with Antnio Gregdio,
Cambera Island, Mozambique, September 22, 1997.
94. Interview with Carlos Chicandari.
95. Ibid.
96. See A. Isaacman and Anton Rosenthal, Slaves, Soldiers, and Police: Power and
Dependency among the Chikunda of Mozambique, ca. 18251920, in The End of
Slavery in Africa, ed. S. Miers and R. Roberts (Madison, 1988).

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals:

Arming Slaves in Colonial Spanish America
jane landers

Several key factors, including legal and cultural precedents, demographic imperatives, and the need to defend a vast and contested empire, led
Spain, more than any other European nation, to depend on the military employment of slaves. Castilian slave law, codied in the thirteenth-century Siete
Partidas and later transplanted to the Americas, was not exclusively based on
race, and Africans joined slaves of other races and ethnicities who had been
captured in just wars, been condemned, or had sold themselves into slavery. Considering slavery an unnatural condition, the Siete Partidas acknowledged a slaves moral personality, dened the slaves rights and obligations,
and established mechanisms by which slaves might transform themselves from
bondsmen into free vassals. One route to freedom was via meritorious service
to the state, and this came to include armed military service in defense of the
Spanish Crown.
The early modern Spanish army was reputed to be the best in the world, and
it was remarkably heterogeneous, incorporating volunteers and mercenaries
from a wide variety of nationalities in forces commanded by Spanish ofcers.
The diversity of Spains armed forces, moreover, reected that of the larger
society. Along with conversos (converted Jews), moriscos (subject Muslims),
and gypsies, free and enslaved Africans formed sizeable populations in southern cities such as Seville, which one scholar described as a chessboard with

120

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals

121

equal numbers of black and white pieces. Given long-standing legal and
cultural precedents and the limited number of regular forces available for duty,
it should come as no surprise that once Spain acquired a vast American empire, the armies it deployed there should be equally diverse. In Europe Spain
had lled its armies with Germans, Italians, Irish, and other foreigners who
fought alongside Spanish peasants. In the Americas Spain depended instead on
indigenous allies and on men of African descent, enslaved and free, to accomplish its early conquests.

Slave Auxiliaries in the Conquest

Spains military campaigns against indigenous populations all included
small numbers of free and enslaved men of African descent. Together, Spaniards and the Africans among them formed a specialized and limited pool of
experienced expeditionaries circulating throughout the circum-Caribbean on
exploratory treks, slaving voyages, and full-blown wars of conquest. Black
slaves were present at every major Spanish discovery and risked their lives
repeatedly for the Spanish Crown despite their bondage. Once the Indian wars
on Hispaniola waned and settlement was well under way, a small group of
battle-tested Africans joined in new circum-Caribbean campaigns, in explorations of southeastern North America, and in the epic conquest of the Aztec
Empire. Others joined military expeditions into the southwestern deserts of
what is today the United States, southward into Central America, and on to
South America. Free and enslaved Africans participated in signicant numbers in the conquest of the great Inca Empire of Peru and in the subsequent
Indian and civil wars that wracked the region. Blacks deployed in small mobile
units struck terror through the Peruvian hinterlands and seemed to the indigenous populations they dominated to be as ruthless as the Spaniards. Then,
with promises of freedom, the rebel Francisco Hernndez Girn raised an
army of several hundred slaves for his unsuccessful bid to wrest Peru from
Spain in 1554. The risk of arming such a large number of slaves was great,
and little is known about how Hernndez Girn utilized and controlled his
slave army, but the rich kingdom he was gambling for must have seemed
worth any danger. Ultimately royal interests prevailed, and although the fate
of those slave rebels is unknown, it is probable that they were reincorporated
into royalist forces, given that the Incas were still in revolt and that Spain
needed every hand. Some of the pardoned may have been among the slaves
who marched southward with Spanish military expeditions into Chile and
into more warfare against the Araucanian Indians. For his valor in those wars
one black slave, Juan Valiente (whose long military career extended from

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1536 to his death in battle in 1553) received an estate near Santiago and later a
grant of commended Indians. This unusual privilege meant status as well as
income, but Valiente died a slave whose legal owner was still attempting to
recover him.

Slaves in the Early Defense of the Caribbean

As enslaved blacks continued to explore and expand Spanish frontiers
throughout the Americas, other slaves of African descent helped Spaniards
hold the fort in the circum-Caribbean, where the catastrophic decline of
native populations was noted earliest. Drawing on old Spanish patterns, in
1540 the Crown ordered residents of the Spanish-American colonies to form
local self-defense groups and, soon thereafter, chronically short-handed Spanish ofcials began to include enslaved Africans in these forces. It was common for a few slaves to appear on militia rolls as drummers, fers, and ag
bearers in their owners units. Other enslaved Africans served as interpreters
and as ad hoc defense forces on rural plantations and ranches and sailed on
locally organized patrol boats throughout the circum-Caribbean.
When French pirates attacked Havana in 1555, however, Spanish ofcials
were forced to arm large numbers of slaves in order to try to save their city.
Havanas small garrison numbered only forty regular Spanish troops, and
ofcials scrambled to supplement this force with about one hundred blacks
and an equal number of Indians. Presumably most of the blacks were slaves,
although some may have been free. When, despite their efforts, the city fell,
Havanas governor hastily raised an additional force of more than two hundred black slaves from the countryside. In this critical moment slaves greatly
outnumbered regular white soldiers, and most were eld hands. Had they
chosen to, they could have handed the city over to the French. Instead they
fought with the Spaniards.
Although Spaniards were forced to depend on slaves to maintain a tenuous
control over thinly populated and greatly dispersed colonies under almost
constant foreign attack and encroachment, they also worried about a rapidly
growing racial imbalance in the circum-Caribbean. Only six years after the
French pirate attack, the captain general and governor of Cuba and Florida,
Pedro Menndez de Avils, informed King Philip II that Hispaniola was populated by thirty thousand blacks and fewer than two thousand Spaniards, while
Puerto Rico held fteen thousand blacks and only ve hundred Spaniards.
Menndez claimed that the same racial disparity held true in Cuba, Veracruz,
Puerto Cavallos in Honduras, Cartagena, and Venezuela and warned that,
because neither England nor France then allowed slavery, any corsair might,

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with a few thousand men, take over all Spains possessions by freeing and
arming the grateful slaves, who, he alleged, would then slay their Spanish
masters.
This is an early articulation of Spains imperial dilemma. When African
slaves in the circum-Caribbean were few in number, medieval precedents
could accommodate their transition to freedom and even their military deployment in times of crisis. When slaves came to outnumber Spaniards and
incidences of marronage and rebellion increased, however, Spanish ofcials
began to fear that the slaves might violently seize their freedom rather than
follow the system for obtaining it.
The Crown responded to Menndezs alarms by establishing government
subsidies and posting regular troops to defend the Caribbean ports through
which its American trade and treasure passed. Of these, Havana was the most
signicant as the rendezvous for the treasure eets, and patterns established
in Cuba were often emulated elsewhere in the circum-Caribbean. Enslaved
blacks helped defend Puerto Rico in 1557, Cartagena in 1560 and 1572, and
Santo Domingo in 1583. Cartagenas ofcials reported that they had two
hundred to three hundred slaves whom they could arm for service, and Santo
Domingos ofcials estimated an available slave force of about four hundred
to ve hundred.
At this time Spain still held slaves of diverse ethnicities and races, most of
whom were captured or condemned slaves, called esclavos forzados. Some
were sentenced to perpetual slavery, while others served lengthy but delimited
periods of enslavement. The Crown often assigned such condemned slaves to
its oating prisons as rowers or employed them in public works such as the
construction of fortications. In April 1568 a Spanish court condemned Corporal Alonso Escudero, a Spaniard from Almonte, to perpetual slavery in the
Cuban galleys for murdering his wife. Ten years later Escudero surfaced again
on a list of kings slaves working as a sawyer. The multiracial and multiethnic
character of Spanish slavery was still evident many years later. In 1595 ofcials
listed 149 forzados assigned to military service in the Havana galleys. Most of
the condemned were Spanish-born, but forty-ve were identied as Muslim
slaves from Tunis, Algiers, Morocco, Fez, Rhodes, Anatolia, and other Mediterranean locations. Still others were Canary Islanders, Greeks, Portuguese,
Mexicans, French, and Genoese, and several men were identied as gypsies.
Only 3 of the 149 Cuban galley slaves were identied as black or mulatto.
An even later report showed 34 Spanish, French, and Flemish forzados working alongside 163 black slaves on the Morro Castle. After more than a century of colonization in the Americas, Spanish slavery had not yet assumed the
racial character it later would. Moreover, although Cubas ofcials regularly

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armed and deployed their own black slaves in times of crisis, they seem not to
have incorporated esclavos forzados into their military forces, suggesting that
they may have trusted their slaves more than forzados.

Slaves Against Maroons

Spaniards often trusted their bondsmen enough to deploy them against
escaped slaves. Not uncommonly, black ranch hands participated in military
expeditions against maroon communities. In 1609 the rancher Pedro Gonzlez de Herrera received a royal commission to attack maroon encampments
led by the famed Yanga outside Veracruz. For the task Captain Gonzlez
recruited a multiracial force that included 150 Indian archers, 100 royal soldiers, some Spanish mercenaries, and black, mulatto, and mestizo cowboys.
For almost a decade such troops fought long and difcult battles against
Yangas maroons, but Yanga nally made a truce with the Spaniards in 1618.
With that, maroons who had cost the Crown fortunes and many lives were
transformed into black militiamen who loyally defended the coast against
Spains enemies and even tracked and returned for ransom other escaped
slaves. Spain reduced other maroons it could not defeat militarily, creating
legitimate and loyal free black towns in New Granada, Hispaniola, and Florida. Thereafter, their male residents formed militias to defend their new towns
and the interests of Spain.

The Creation of Free Black Militias

By the seventeenth century, Spain was battling not only French but also
Dutch and English challengers in the Spanish Lake and, faced with losing
all, it marshaled a mixed labor force of forzados, African slaves, and occasionally subjected Indians to erect great stone forts at Havana, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Cartagena, Portobelo, Acapulco, and St. Augustine, as well
as many minor constructions in lesser ports along its threatened coasts. Spain
also maintained naval squadrons and small army garrisons in the region, most
of which were chronically undermanned. But arming slaves and ex-slaves
was what enabled Spain to hold the circum-Caribbean for more than three
centuries.
Realizing that ad hoc forces such as those raised in 1555 could not meet the
ever-growing threats against shipping and settlements around the Caribbean,
Cuban ofcials began organizing more formal militias of free men of color. By
1600 Cubas free mulatto company numbered one hundred men. The Spanish governors of Jamaica and Puebla, Mexico, also organized companies of

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free mulattoes, and this strategy may indicate an early attempt to restrict
formal military service to free persons having at least some white ancestry.
But necessity trumped racial and legal exclusivity when Spain began losing
both treasure eets and territory. Repeated assaults on the coastal settlements
of New Granada left settlers haunted by fear of invasion throughout the colonial period, according to one historian. The Dutch seized Curaao in 1634;
by mid-century French smugglers and buccaneers had converted the western
portion of Hispaniola into a French colony and also occupied Tortuga; and in
1655 the English took Jamaica, despite the best efforts of Spanish slaves.
Spains enemies now held economic and military bases from which to attack
Spanish eets and settlements. Recognizing that Spain could not respond
quickly enough with metropolitan troops to any foreign attacks, the king
instructed the viceroy of New Spain to evaluate the formation of more free
black companies. His royal order noted that the mulattoes and blacks who
defended his circum-Caribbean realms were persons of valor who fought
with vigor and reputation. By mid-century, then, the Spanish Crown had
fully accepted that free men of color could be brave and honorable, and this
important metropolitan acknowledgment apparently encouraged enlistments.
A Central American roster from 1673 listed almost two thousand pardos
(usually meaning mulattoes, but sometimes referring to non-Europeans of
mixed ancestry) serving in infantry units throughout the isthmus. Similar
units of free black, or moreno, men were organized in Hispaniola, Veracruz,
Campeche, Puerto Rico, Panama, Caracas, Cartagena, and Florida.

Slave Volunteers
More signicant, the Spanish Crown came to recognize that slaves might
also perform valuable military service. Captain Diego Martn, alias Diego el
Mulato, began life as a slave in Havana, but as a young man he took to piracy.
His colorful career as a corsair for the West Indies Company included many
prizes and prisoners taken from Campeche to Veracruz. Eventually, as English
pirates were also doing, Captain Diego decided to go straight. In a letter
delivered to Spanish ofcials in Havana in 1638, Martn expressed his great
desire to serve as a valiant soldier of the king, our lord, making appropriate
references to the kings championship of the Catholic faith. He promised to
prevent Dutch or other enemy ships from stopping along Cubas coasts and
declared, [E]specially knowing that I am here very few would dare pass on to
the Indies, for they certainly fear me. Martns boast must have been wellfounded, for Havana ofcials sent the offer to Spain with a recommendation
of royal pardon and a salary equivalent to that of an admiral, making no

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derogatory mention of his color or class. Spanish ofcials once again demonstrated their racial pragmatism in the face of necessity.
As the slave Diego transformed himself by deeds and words, so, too, did the
royal slaves who worked the copper mines at Santiago de Cuba. In the 1670s,
their spokesperson, Captain Juan Moreno, reminded the king of their many
previous military services on his behalf. Moreno referred specically to tracking fugitive slaves and to having helped defend the port of Guaycabn when
English forces attacked from Jamaica. On that occasion, seventy-three slave
miners had volunteered and served. The slave captain assured the Crown of
his fellow slaves ardent zeal and promised future great actions even if
these went unrewarded. Contemporary Spanish sources support a tradition of
slave service in Santiago, which they considered a frontier because of its southern coastal location and thin population, as well as its aggressive English
neighbors.
At this very moment, on the northern frontier of the Caribbean, slaves
escaping from the newly settled English colony of Carolina asked for and
received religious sanctuary in Spanish Florida. After they converted to Catholicism and swore fealty, Spanish ofcials armed the new Christians and
sent them northward on guerrilla raids against the edgling plantations of the
enemy. Arming these slaves and subsequent refugees from English slavery
helped Spain to hold the Florida frontier against English raids in 1728 and a
major land and naval assault in 1740, but when Spain nally ceded Florida to
the English in 1763, the former slaves sailed to Cuba with the Spaniards who
freed them rather than await the English, who might reenslave them.

Bourbon Reform of the Black Militias

In 1700, after more than two centuries of black military service in the
Caribbean, French Bourbons assumed the Spanish throne and instituted reforms in order to more effectively control the empire and its resources. In place
of the existing black militias they created new disciplined militias of pardos
(mulattoes) and morenos (blacks). To encourage enlistment they exempted
recruits from tribute payments. These levies were a mark of conquest and
subjugation deeply resented and protested by black militiamen. In fact, tribute
payments from freed blacks had rarely been collected, so this reform cost the
Crown little and gained it the goodwill of the militiamen. The Bourbon reforms also formalized the practice of allowing blacks to elect their own ofcers, and most important, extended the fuero militar to pardo and moreno
units. The fuero was a corporate charter with important implications, for it
exempted black militiamen from prosecution in civilian courts and put them

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on equal juridical status with white militiamen. The fuero also granted blacks
who served in the military hospitalization, retirement, and death benets, as
well as the right to wear uniforms and bear arms. White soldiers in New Spain
protested these changes and the resulting blurring of racial boundaries and
sought to abridge the benets of their fuero, generally limiting its enjoyment to
ofcers in active service. Old racial hierarchies were difcult to change in the
heart of the viceroyalty, but welcome change did come in the Caribbean periphery, where the juridical and social benets of militia membership were
clearly appreciated and men of African descent developed traditions of family
service. In Cartagena so many blacks enlisted that they soon matched the
numbers of whites. In Peru more than fourteen hundred pardos and morenos
enlisted in new infantry units, and several hundred more served in cavalry
units. By 1770 more than three thousand men of color had joined Cubas
militia, forming themselves into three battalions and sixteen additional companies which constituted more than one-fourth of the islands armed forces.
The Reglamento para las milicias de infantera y caballera de la Isla de Cuba
governed military reorganizations not only in Cuba but also in Florida, Puerto
Rico, Louisiana, and Panama, where blacks also enlisted in large numbers.

Slave Soldiers in Eighteenth-Century Cuba

One interesting feature of the Cuban Reglamento was the organization
in Havana of an artillery company of one hundred royal slaves. Ofcials
responsible for that unit registered the name, age, physical description (including scarication patterns), and ethnicity of each. They also gave information
about their wives and children. This detailed registration and other features of
the code suggest that the slave artillery company was composed largely of
bozales, or unacculturated African-born slaves. Regulations required the commander of the slave artillery company to see to its members religious instruction and marriage. Drawing on patterns as old as the fteenth century, the
Crown hoped to see these bozales transformed into Christian family men, and
so slave wives and children were to live within the garrison with the slave
artillerymen. The women would perform domestic chores such as cooking and
laundry for the garrisons soldiers, but with their husbands permission they
could also nd work in the city. The womens wages, or jornales, were to be
pooled and placed in the traditional chest with three keys that the royal treasurers and religious brotherhoods also used. This communal fund of earnings
would be used to pay for midwives and for other needs such as clothing for
their children.
Cubas slave artillery company saw bloody battle when the British captured

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Havana in 1762. English accounts of the siege document heavy casualties

suffered by the Cuban defenders and distinguish militia-natives (presumably black militias in their uniforms) from slaves, whom they commonly described as mulatos and negros. These English sources claimed that the latter
died by the hundreds. Cubas disciplined black militia units also fought
bravely to defend their homeland, and the British gave no quarter to any black
men they captured. Despite that knowledge, a group of twenty Cuban slaves,
armed only with machetes and acting totally independently, launched their
own offensive against a superior English force at Cubas great Morro Castle,
killing some of the English enemy and capturing seven more. Some of them
may have been members of the slave artillery company. The ladies of Havana described the slaves heroism in a letter to the king, who freed them and
awarded their leader, Andrs Gutirrez, the title of captain. The compensation
claims of their owners document other slaves who died ghting the British.

Spains Black Militias in the Era of Revolutions

The exigencies of the eighteenth century led Spain to post many of
Cubas black militiamen to the frontiers of Louisiana, Florida, the Yucatn,
and Mexico, and some spent as many as twenty years abroad before returning
to their homes. Others never saw Cuba again. Despite the hardships of
their service and lingering discrimination, black militiamen from Cuba, Florida, and Louisiana served with distinction during the American Revolution.
Spains black troops fought bravely in the Gulf campaigns at Mobile and
Pensacola and in the Mississippi River campaigns at Manchac and Baton
Rouge. Governor Bernardo de Glvez nominated a number of the black men
who served in the Mississippi River campaign for royal commendations, and
the Crown acknowledged the importance of their contribution with silver
medals and promotions. Black militiamen from Cuba and Florida later joined
an expedition against the English in the Bahamas.
At the end of the American Revolution, Spain regained Florida from the
British and blacks resumed a long tradition of military service in that colony.
Some of Spains most effective soldiers were slaves escaped from Loyalist
owners during the colonial transfer to whom Floridas governors granted religious sanctuary. The Loyalist brothers Major Henry Williams and William
Williams tried for many years to reclaim three runaway slaves who escaped
from them on the day after Christmas 1784, as the brothers prepared to
evacuate them to New Providence in the Bahamas. The brothers 1785 advertisement described Reynor [Reyna], wife to Hector, and Sam, for they both
have her to wife. In 1788 the trio of runaways presented themselves to

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Spanish authorities and disputed their purported masters account. Hector

stated that they had accompanied Major William Williams to East Florida in
Hectors own boat and that they had all lived as free persons as a consequence
of the mens military service. Sams statement conrmed their free status and
military service, adding the information that he had once belonged to Henry
Alexander of South Carolina and that Hector and Reyna had belonged to
Diego Devaux. Governor Zspedes upheld the freed slaves claims to freedom despite numerous appeals by the Williams brothers.
Men like Hector and Sam had ample opportunity to demonstrate their
loyalty and military skills in the following decades. Floridas aggressive neighbors to the north bitterly contested Spains fugitive slave policy, its use of
armed blacks in military service, and its alliance with the Seminole and Creek
nations, whose lands they coveted. Well aware of the colonys vulnerable
position, Floridas governors complained incessantly to Spain about crumbling defenses, irregular receipt of the government subsidy, and the poor quality of regular troops. Even if the men had been of the best caliber, however,
there were too few of them to adequately patrol Floridas great expanse. Long
stretches of coastline lay beyond the control of the government located in St.
Augustine, and even the sparsely populated areas surrounding the capital were
laced with waterways that provided easy access into the province by assorted
banditti and invaders. Floridas settlers and their haciendas, harvests, and
slaves were always at risk.
Given the proximity of the international border at the St. Marys River,
Spains military debility, and the challenge of monitoring Floridas difcult
geography, the free black militia proved indispensable to the colonys defense. But Floridas governors also utilized slaves in times of crisis. During
the French-inspired invasion of 1795, Floridas governor called up his black
militias but also required all citizens with slaves to present them for government construction projects and to serve as sailors and rowers on government
boats. Perhaps inspired by the Cuban model, he also created a separate unit
of slaves that he assigned to the artillery and trained to man the canons and in
other ways relieve the regular military. The governor donated one of his own
slaves to this unit, and the commandant of the Third Cuban Battalion posted in
Florida donated two, but other planters offered only a thousand excuses.

The Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV

Ironically, Spains dependence on former slaves reached new heights as a
result of the slave revolt that erupted in Saint Domingue in 1791. Although its
oldest settlements lay only across the mountains from the burning plantations

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and bloodshed, Spain recognized old traditions and realized that immediate
necessity might permit an alliance with the risen slaves and forestall disaster in
Santo Domingo.
Without any previous known military training, the creole slaves JeanFranois and Georges (Jorge) Biassou had assumed command of the rebel
forces of the North and managed to hold their polyglot armies together against
the odds. Jean-Franois decorated himself with the Cross of Saint Louis, Biassou titled himself the Viceroy of the Conquered Territories, and Toussaint
Louverture became an aide and physician to Biassous large army of forty
thousand men. The rebels early recognized their material limitations and
attempted to secure the general amnesty promised by the French Assembly.
They sued for peace in exchange for their own freedom and political rights and
those of their families and ofcers, but the reactionary planters of Saint Domingue rudely and unwisely rejected their offer. Biassou angrily ordered the
execution of all his white prisoners, vowing that they would pay for the
insolence of the [Colonial] Assembly which has dared to write to me with so
little respect. Toussaint stayed his superiors order, but the bloody ghting
continued.
After England and Spain declared war on France in the spring of 1793, both
powers courted the black rebels of the North. Commissioner Lger Felicit
Sonthonax took the initiative to also offer freedom and alliance in the name of
the French Republic, but as Robin Blackburn and others have noted, some
rebels considered this a trick and believed only a king could make and keep
such a promise. Jean-Franois and Biassou allegedly responded, Since the
beginning of the world we have obeyed the will of a king. We have lost the
king of France but we are dear to him of Spain who constantly shows us
reward and assistance. We therefore cannot recognize you until you have
enthroned a king.
Thus, Jean-Franois, Biassou, and Toussaint decided to accept the Spanish
offer of alliance, declaring in a rhetorical ourish that they would rather be
slaves of the Spaniards than free with the French. Despite their conservative
rhetoric, the slave rebels were erce ghters and could be either formidable
enemies or invaluable allies. Counting on the latter, Spain designated its new
armies of rebellious slaves the Black Auxiliaries of Charles IV, a much more
formal title and afliation than earlier or later black militias ever received. The
Spanish captain general and governor of Santo Domingo ceremoniously decorated Jean-Franois, Biassou, and Toussaint with gold medals bearing the
likeness of the king and presented them with documents expressing the gratitude and condence of the Spanish government. Toussaints followers allegedly (and prophetically) warned, You have received commissions and you

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have guarantees. Guard your liveries and your parchments. One day they will
serve you as the fastidious titles of our former aristocrats served them.
Newly supplied and under a Spanish ag, the forces of Jean-Franois, Biassou, and Toussaint fought many bloody battles against the French. One of the
rebels primary supporters, Father Josef Vsquez, himself a mulatto, wrote
that if divine Providence had not favored us with the blacks [allies], we would
have been victims of the fury of the savage masses. He added that although
the Spaniards did not fully trust the new allies who fought back the slaves, it
is they who have taken prisoners, they who have given the King 200 slaves,
and they who have fought the campaign.
Vsquez was correct on all counts. Despite centuries of dependence on
former slaves, none of Spains previous military recruits were known leaders of
a slave revolt of such proportions. For this reason the alliance Spain struck
with these three revolutionary leaders was an uneasy one marked by distrust
on both sides. Spanish ofcials did feel compelled in general to honor promises
of freedom, relocation, and support made in the name of their king, but they
also watched the former slaves with fear and suspicion and tried to isolate
them and the dangerous ideas they represented. And although it is clear that
Spains black allies were often embittered by the graceless way some Spanish
ofcials treated them and never anticipated the diaspora they would experience at the end of the war, Jean-Franois and Jorge Biassou did not die betrayed in jail, as did Toussaint.
When the French Assembly nally abolished slavery in May 1794, Toussaint offered his services and loyalty to the French Republic, while JeanFranois and Biassou remained loyal to Spain. Before long the Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV were losing battles against Toussaint, who surprised and
defeated Spanish forces at San Raphael on May 6, 1794. Two months later at
Bayaj, Jean-Franois and Biassou led their forces in a massacre of more than
one thousand French men, women, and children who had accepted Spanish
offers of protection for returning from the United States.
This event led to a dramatic shift in Spanish attitudes toward the black
auxiliaries. Although Spaniards were also involved in the killings, the governor of Bayaj later referred to the incident as a cruel crime that inspired in
the sanguinary hearts and entrails [of the blacks] the reckless belief that they
had reconquered the town and saved the Spanish garrison from a plot against
them by the French migrs. If the black troops actually believed that the
returning French planters who had rejected their freedom plotted to overturn
the Spaniards who had accepted it, then their actions become more explicable,
if no less bloody. One account claims that Jean-Franois had spent the morning in the confessional with Father Vsquez and that it was the priest, in fact,

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who gave the sign to commence the slaughter. If true, the actions of JeanFranois and Biassou on that horrible day may have been sanctioned by their
own beloved priest and counselor.
Spain and the Directory of the French Republic nally concluded a peace
treaty in 1795, according to which Spain ceded western Hispaniola to the
French and agreed to disband the Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV. Bayajs
governor recommended that the Crown abolish black military employment
and titles immediately. Bothered by the auxiliaries pretensions to superiority, he argued that he had seen evidence of their fury, and although they paint
themselves with other colors, they are the same who murdered their owners,
violated their wives, and destroyed all those with property. He also warned
that some of the black auxiliaries thought the abandonment of their property
would excuse their crimes and be proof of delity but that their sacrices were
only illusions and were made in their own interest. The governor told JeanFranois, Biassou, and the other military leaders they would have to evacuate
Hispaniola because the French Republic did not nd their presence compatible, but he urged the simple soldiers to remain because they had been
offered freedom by both the French Republic and Spain. The Republic would
need laborers to restore the burned plantations.
The black armies wanted, instead, to maintain their units, ranks, salaries,
and rations and to embark together for some designated place where they
should be given lands to cultivate and be permitted to form a town. They had
not given everything in order to return to their former state. They argued that
they would then constitute a ready force, able to ght for the king of Spain
wherever he should care to send them. There was, in fact, royal precedent for
this option; only decades before this, the militia of the town of Gracia Real de
Santa Teresa de Mose in Florida, also composed of former slaves, was evacuated en masse to Cuba in 1763, granted homesteads together, and allowed to
retain their militia titles and perquisites.
Over the governors supposed opposition, a considerable number of soldiers embarked with their leaders for Havana, where, he predicted, they would
expect the same distinctions, prerogatives, luxury, and excessive tolerance
they had had in Bayaj. He assured the captain general of Cuba that he never
promised the venomous vipers that they would be allowed to remain in
Havana. The captain general of Santo Domingo had once written glowing
reports about the exploits of the valiant warriors he decorated in the kings
name, but as soon as the ghting ceased, he, too, advocated that they be
shipped to Havana. He wrote Cubas governor that the blacks were capable
of being domesticated and that any misdeeds of theirs (presumably a reference to Bayaj) were attributable to the bad governance they had experienced

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under the French. In the rapid evacuation families were separated and Biassou was forced to leave behind his own mother, whom he had allegedly rescued
from slavery in the early years of the revolt. The embittered black general
lodged a formal complaint against the governor and urged his dismissal.
On the last day of December 1795, Spanish ofcials carefully recorded the
exodus of the Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV from Bayaj who sailed away for
Havana on a small otilla of four ships. Although Havanas blacks celebrated the arrival of Jean-Franois and his troops, Cubas governorcaptain
general was no more anxious than were the governors of Bayaj and Santo
Domingo to have a large number of unemployed, armed, and experienced
wolves, as they were now referred to, on his hands. He hastily convoked a
war council that decided to deport the black armies, using as its authority the
royal order forbidding the introduction of blacks from French areas.
Jean-Franois responded immediately with a formal statement in which he
reminded the Cuban ofcials of the ofces, decorations, and military appointments given the blacks by the Spanish court, which should have been
sufcient proof of their loyalty and submission. He also reminded them of
the personal sacrices each auxiliary made leaving hearth and home . . .
in blind obedience to the kings orders. He added the implied threat that
the situation in which the Black Auxiliaries found themselves (oating on
board crowded ships in Havana harbor) made them question whether they
should reconsider the advantageous treaties proposed by agents of the British
Crown. In closing Jean-Franois said his troops felt betrayed, and he made
three demands of the Spaniards: that they vouch for the safety of Father
Vsquez (who had not yet arrived in Havana); that his troops be allowed to
return to Bayaj if they would not be permitted to disembark in Havana; and
that the governor tell them whether they were prisoners of the state or vassals
of the King of Spain.
Cubas governor answered that he could not permit the blacks to await the
arrival of Father Vsquez but that he would allow the priest to join them later
should he so choose. The governor had no objections to their returning to
Bayaj (anywhere but Havana), but he bristled at Jean-Franoiss last demand,
denouncing it as petulant and saying that the prisoners of state, of which
there are many in this city, were kept in tight and secure jail cells, whereas the
blacks had been received and treated well, given all they asked, and allowed to
freely choose their destinations.
In fact, however, the governors of Santo Domingo and Cuba apparently
envisioned the Isle Of Pines off Cubas southern coast as an ideal repository
where the numerous blacks could be contained, monitored, and civilized for
some time. Santo Domingos governor proposed that once they had proven

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themselves capable of some useful occupation, the good blacks could slowly
be released into the general population. Meanwhile, children born on the island and raised under Spanish laws would not bear such a horric aspect.
In the end, Jean-Franois and twelve of his military subordinates, along
with their extended families, totaling 790 persons, sailed away from Havana
for Cdiz, Spain. Although his life there was not without conict, JeanFranois continued his military service to Spain until his death. The remaining members of Jean-Franoiss group were dispersed as follows: 115 persons
to Campeche, 144 to Trinidad de Barlovento, 307 to Truxillo, and 88 to
Portobelo, Panama. Jorge Biassou and his dependents sailed instead for Florida. Each of the Spanish governors who received these groups recognized that
they had to honor the promises of the king to support his loyal black allies.
Not only was the kings honor at stake, but England had let it be known that
should the Spanish blacks be discontent with their new locations, they had
only to say the word and transports would relocate them to the British holding
of their choice.
Only three months after General Jorge Biassous followers landed in Florida, his brother-in-law and military heir, Sergeant Juan Jorge Jacobo, married
Rafaela Witten in St. Augustines cathedral. This union had important political implications, for the bride was the daughter of Juan Bautista (Prince)
Witten. Like Biassou and Jorge Jacobo, Witten was a former slave who had
become a member of Spains free black militia and had served with distinction
against the Gent-inspired invaders of 1795. The marriage of Biassous heir,
Jorge, and Wittens daughter, Rafaela, thus united the leading families of both
groups of blacks who had allied with the cause of the Spanish king against the
forces of French republicanism. Subsequent marriages and baptisms added
new layers of connection, and the refugees consistently used the structures of
the Catholic Church to strengthen their blended community. The overlapping
relationships and creation of extended ctive families among blacks can be
traced until the evacuation of Florida and may well have continued thereafter
in Cuba. General Jorge Biassou, also referred to in the Spanish records as the
Black Caudillo, blended the men of both groups into a single military unit that
saw almost continuous service in Florida. Until that time, the highest rank ever
achieved by a black militiaman in Florida had been sergeant, and Biassous
elevated title thus raised the status of the rest.
Biassous proud and vain character was evident in his dress as well as his
attitude. The black general walked the streets of St. Augustine in ne clothes
trimmed in gold and carried a silver-trimmed saber and a fancy ivory-andsilver dagger. The gold medal of Charles IV must also have impressed the
townspeople, unaccustomed to seeing such nery on a black man. The gov-

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals

135

ernor, who may have been projecting his own concerns, alleged, The slaveowners have viewed his arrival with great disgust, for they fear he will set a
bad example for the rest of his class.
The presence of the black auxiliaries caused consternation not only among
the Spanish governors who reluctantly received them but also among the
Anglo planters on Floridas borders, who were already disturbed by Spains
racial policies and its reliance on black militias. At a time when slave conspiracies and rebellions, maroon settlements, and Indian wars unsettled the southeastern frontier, this new black presence seemed particularly threatening, and
correspondence and newspaper editorials of the day connected Florida to
Saint Domingue and to Suriname and Jamaica, where other slaves had waged
effective wars of liberation. Ultimately the Spaniards dependence on armed
black forces contributed to a series of invasions sponsored by the United States
and to U.S. acquisition of Florida.
After the drama of Saint Domingue, Florida must have appeared tame to
Biassou and his troops. In 1799 Biassou asked to be allowed to go to Spain and
ght for the king in his European wars, since he had no way to demonstrate his
military services in Florida. A month later he asked to be allowed to organize
two separate companies of pardo and moreno militias, to be placed under his
command, that would have equal footing with the white militias. The request
to divide his unit along color lines may seem incongruous given Biassous race,
but disciplined units throughout the Spanish Caribbean were similarly divided, and under this proposal black skin would have trumped tan.
Although Biassous plan to reorganize Floridas black troops came to naught,
his desire for military action was answered the following year when the socalled State of Muskogee declared war against Spain. After a brief expedition
in pursuit of marauding Indians, Biassou died unexpectedly in 1801 and was
buried in St. Augustine with full honors. After a Mass at the Cathedral that
included songs, tolling bells, candles, and incense, the governor and other
notables accompanied his cortege to the cemetery. Drummers and an honor
guard of twenty members of the black militia completed the procession, and
his men discharged a volley at Biassous grave. The public notary attested that
every effort was made to accord him the decency due an ofcer Spain had
recognized for military heroism.
On Biassous death, his brother-in-law Jorge Jacobo succeeded to the command of Floridas black militias, which continued to patrol the Indian frontiers. Throughout the spring and summer Jacobo and his captains, Benjamin
Segui, also a veteran of Saint Domingue, and Prince Witten, the battle-tested
former slave from Carolina, led the free black militia. They engaged the Indians on various occasions and once rescued a detachment of white dragoons

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Jane Landers

under siege at a frontier post, successes that may have been instrumental in the
Seminoles decision to sign a peace treaty with Spain in August 1802.
Although the governors of Florida attempted to enforce its borders with
military patrols and to control trade and immigration with passport and customs regulations, the province was almost impossible to police, and raiding
Indians and Georgians could enter almost at will. In 1812 so-called Patriots
from Georgia launched an ill-fated invasion of Spanish Florida that was covertly supported by President James Madison and a unit of U.S. Marines.
Against these forces Floridas governor sent his black militias, Seminole allies,
and slaves. Armed slaves appear on the Florida militia rosters from April
through October 1812 clearly identied as soldados esclavos, or slave soldiers.
The governor posted some of these local slaves at the Castillo de San Marcos
and outlying redoubts. Other slaves, such as Samuel Hall and Esteban Creten,
joined nine free black militiamen and three black ofcers posted at a Seminole
village. The governor depended heavily on another slave, Tony Proctor,
the best translator of the Indian languages in the province, to promote the
Spanish-black-Indian alliance. He sent Proctor to the Seminole village of La
Chua (near present-day Gainesville), where the slave recruited several hundred warriors for the Spanish side. When the Patriots recognized Proctors
utility, they captured him and tried to employ him in the same capacity. Proctor, however, was true to the Spaniards. He alerted the Seminoles that he was
speaking for the rebels under duress and that all he told them was false. He
later managed to escape from the Patriots and returned to St. Augustine,
where the grateful governor felt obligated to reward the service and loyalty of
this miserable slave. In the name of the government he paid Proctors owner
350 pesos and granted the translator his liberty.
Other Florida slaves also gained their freedom for their military service
during the Patriot invasion. About twenty-one slaves took advantage of the
chaos to escape from rebel plantations and present themselves for armed service in St. Augustine. Although his advisors urged the governor not to pay
the new inductees, he ordered that the slaves receive the same pay as the
soldiers of the Third Battalion of Cuba, as much as for necessity as to reward
their delity.
Necessity explains Spains centuries-long military deployment of slaves in the
circum-Caribbean. Outnumbered by indigenous enemies in the initial conquests and challenged by an assortment of imperial rivals in the age of piracy,
at the very time that European wars required Spain to maintain large metropolitan armies, Spain had almost no other recourse but to depend on local
defense forces, which from the very beginning of settlement included slaves.

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals

137

This strategy was facilitated by the fact that Spanish slavery had nonracial
origins and that Spains corporatist social structures and effective legal codes
provided institutional mechanisms for erasing distinctions among slave and
free soldiers. The French, the English, and the Dutch, who all followed Spain
to the Americas and who lacked both the long familiarity with Africans and
the legal and social frameworks for incorporating African slaves, nevertheless
quickly realized the utility of the Spanish model and adapted it to their own
needs throughout the Caribbean.
The delity slaves had repeatedly demonstrated in the Caribbean also helps
explain Spains continued dependence on them and reciprocal loyalty toward
them. Having armed and been defended by even the most famed slave rebels of
the hemisphere, those from Saint Domingue, Spain knew that it could rely on
other slaves, even in the era of revolutions. The men Spain transformed from
slaves into soldiers were among her most loyal and steadfast allies despite poor
pay, great risk, and lingering racial discrimination. They understood that military service to Spain would not only free them but incorporate them and
guarantee them at least some reciprocal loyalty from the Crown and its ofcials. Although various leaders of independence movements also courted and
occasionally freed slaves, many chose instead to ght for Spain. And even as
Spains empire began to crumble, it attempted to honor its responsibility for
slave soldiers by ensuring treaty rights for those left behind and evacuating
and supporting those who chose to join them in still-loyal Cuba.

Notes
1. Jos Luis Corts Lpez, Los orgines de la esclavitud negra en Espaa (Madrid,
1986), 2344, 12132; William D. Phillips Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early
Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985), 162; Ruth Pike, Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1972), 17092. Other enslaved
groups in fteenth-century Spain included Jews, Moors, Turks (actually Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese), white Christians (Sardinians, Greeks, Russians, and Spaniards), and
Guanches from the Canary Islands. Leslie Rout, The African Experience in Spanish
America, 1502 to the Present Day (Cambridge, UK, 1976), 17. Even Amerindians sometimes were sold as slaves in Seville, despite royal prohibitions against their enslavement.
Alfonso Franco Silva, Regesto documental sobre la esclavitud Sevillana, 14531513
(Sevilla, 1979).
2. The medieval ideal of charity toward miserable classes also led Spanish owners to
manumit favored slaves, often in their wills. Furthermore, Castillian law and custom
permitted slaves to hold and transfer property and, with their peculium, or private property, they could purchase their freedom or that of relatives or friends. Thus, the lenient
attitude toward manumission created a free black class in Spain, which lled accepted
economic, social, and low-level political roles. Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in

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the New World, 14921700 (Minneapolis, 1984), 2426; Corts Lpez, Los orgines de
la esclavitud, 13350.
3. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 14691716 (New York, 1977), 132; Antonio Domnguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain, 15161659 (New York, 1971), 3543; Ross
Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (New York, 1994), 9.
4. Domnguez Ortiz, Golden Age of Spain, 16272. Notarial records from Seville
(150125) counted 5,271 slaves, almost 4,000 of whom were listed as blacks or mulattoes. Phillips, Slavery from Roman Times, 161; Ruth Pike, Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century: Slaves and Freedmen, Hispanic American Historical Review 53 (August
1967): 34459; Pike, Aristocrats and Traders, 17192; Antonio Domnguez Ortiz, La
esclavitud en Castilla durante la Edad Moderna, Estudios de historia social de Espaa 2
(1952): 37778.
5. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, 1999), chap. 1; Matthew
Restall, Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America Americas
57:2 (2000), 171205; Rout, African Experience in Spanish America, 7577.
6. One illustrative case is that of the West African Juan Garrido, who sailed from
Seville to Hispaniola in 1496. There he and other free blacks joined the wars of pacication against the native populations, who were in revolt. Ricardo E. Alegra, Juan Garrido, el Conquistador Negro en Las Antillas, Florida, Mxico y California, c. 15031540
(San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1990), 17, 20, 30. On the wars in Hispaniola see Samuel M.
Wilson, Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (Tuscaloosa, AL,
1990), 74109.
7. The Spaniards conquered Puerto Rico in 1508, Jamaica in 1509, Cuba in 1511, and
Florida in 1513. Alegra, Juan Garrido, 17, 20, 30. Several Aztec codices depict Juan
Garrido at Cortes side, and the African joined his patron on one nal, and unsuccessful,
expedition in search of black Amazons in what came to be California. Peter Gerhard, A
Black Conquistador in Mexico, Hispanic American Historical Review 58 (1978): 451
59; Alegra, Juan Garrido, 114, 116, 119, 12738.
8. Small numbers of black slaves fought alongside Rodrigo de Contreras in Costa Rica
in 1540, and other black slaves also fought in Juan Estrada Rvagos expedition through
Costa Rica in 1560. Juan Carlos Solrzano, Campaas de exploracin y conquista de
Costa Rica, Serie Avances de Investigacin no. 54, Centro de Investigaciones Histricas
de Amrica Central, as cited in Rina Cceres, Negros, mulatos, esclavos y libertos en la
Costa Rica del siglo XVII (Mexico City, 2000), 15.
9. Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 15241650 (Stanford,
1974); James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 15321560: A Social History (Madison, 1994),
19394. The mestizo chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayalla commonly associates Spaniards, mestizos, and mulattoes in artistic depictions of cruelty toward the indigenous
population of Peru.
10. Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 19495. Lockharts revision of his 1968 work still underestimates African military skills, alleging that since this was the last major civil war in
Peru, blacks never again had a chance to learn the renements of the military art as
practiced by Europeans. For a rst-hand account of the rebellion see Pero Lopez, Rutas
de Cartagena de Indias a Buenos Aires y sublevaciones de Pizarro, Castilla, y Hernndez
Girn, 15401570, trans. Juan Friede (Madrid, 1970), 11220.

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals

139

11. Rout, African Experience, 7677; Rolando Mellafe, La introduccin de la esclavitud negra en Chile, trco y rutas, 2nd ed. (Santiago, 1984), 4549.
12. Richard W. Slatta, Spanish Colonial Military Strategy and Ideology, in Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire, ed. Donna J. Guy and Thomas E. Sheridan (Tucson, 1998), 8396.
13. Richard W. Slatta, Spanish Colonial Military Strategy and Ideology, in Contested Ground, ed. Guy and Sheridan, 8396.
14. Isabel Macias, Cuba en la primera mitad del siglo XVII (Seville, 1978), 302, 308.
15. Irene Wright, The Early History of Cuba, 14921586 (New York, 1916), 315;
Paul E. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 15351585:
Precedent, Patrimonialism and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge, 1980), 3951; Pedro
Deschamps Chapeaux, Los Batallones de pardos y morenos libres (Havana, 1976), 18.
For example, Captain Gutierre de Mirandas Spanish-born mulatto slave, Sebastin de
Miranda, accompanied him to Santa Elena, in present-day South Carolina, where he
served rst as a drummer and later as a member of the crew of the patrol boat San Juan.
Data de Sueldos, June 21, 1580, Contadura 232, Archivo General de Indias, Seville,
Spain (hereafter cited as AGI).
16. After France and Spain went to war in 1552, Spanish ofcials complained that
Caribbean waters were as full of French as New Rochelle. Kenneth Andrews, The
Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 15301630 (New Haven, 1978), 82; Informacin hecha por Diego de Mazariegos sobre la toma de La Habana por Jacques de Sores,
1555, Patronato 267, AGI, cited in Documentos para la historia colonial de Cuba: Siglos
XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, ed. Csar Garca del Pino and Alicia Melis Cappa (Havana,
1988), 440.
17. Memorial of Pedro Menndez de Avils, undated [156162], in E. Ruidaz y
Caravia, La Florida (Madrid, 1893), 2:322, cited in Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish
Settlements Within the Present Limits of the United States: Florida, 15621574 (New
York, 1959), 1415, 96. This document also appears in the collection of the St. Augustine
Foundation and is identied as being from the Archivo del Instituto de Valencia de Don
Juan Madrid, Envio 25-H, no. 162, Council of the Indies, n.d. (probably November
1569). Menndezs demographic estimates appear to be reasonably accurate, for in 1542,
after a tour of the island, Hispaniolas archdeacon, Alonso de Castro, estimated the black
population at twenty-ve thousand to thirty thousand and the white population at only
twelve hundred. Castro also estimated that more than three thousand maroons lived on
the island. Alonso de Castro to the Council of the Indies, March 26, 1542, cited in Jos
Luis Saez, La iglesia y el negro esclavo en Santo Domingo: Una historia de tres siglos
(Santo Domingo, 1994), 27374. By the time of Menndezs report, Spaniards had battled slaves in Hispaniola (1521), Santa Marta, Colombia (1530), Cuba (1533), Mexico
City (1537, 1546), Hispaniola (154548), Honduras (1548), and Barquisimeto, Venezuela (1555). Rout, African Experience in Spanish America, 99125.
18. Hoffman, Spanish Crown, 41; Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the
Americas, 15001750 (Armonk, NY, 1998), chap. 1.
19. Hoffman, Spanish Crown, appendix II.
20. Patronato 255, AGI, Jeanette Thurber Connor Collection, P. K. Yonge Library of
Florida History, University of Florida, Gainesville (hereafter cited as PKY).

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21. Relacin de los esclavos forzados que quedaron de la galera San Agustn de la Havana, Documentos para la historia colonial de Cuba, ed. Garca del Pino and Cappa, 63
67. On categories and ethnicities of galley slaves see Ruth Pike, Penal Servitude in Early
Modern Spain (Madison, 1983), 326. Spaniards wishing to take slaves to the Americas
were required to obtain licenses for their passage, and these records also document
sixteenth-century slaves of diverse ethnic and racial origins. See Peter Boyd-Bowman,
Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World (14931580) (Buffalo, 1973).
22. Juan de Eguiluz a su Magestad, La Habana, October 24, 1604, Santo Domingo
(hereafter cited as SD) 129, AGI, and Cristbal Roda a su Magestad, La Habana, July 1,
1605, SD 129, AGI, cited in Macias, Cuba en la primera mitad del siglo XVII, 28283.
23. Jane Landers, An American Crusade: Seventeenth-Century Spanish Expeditions
Against the Maroons, paper delivered at the Forum on European Expansion and Global
Interaction, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, 1998; Relacin de la misin que fu
enviado el P. Juan Laurencio, acompaando a una escuadra de soldados que sala la
reduccin de negros foragidos y salteadores,in Andrs Prez de Ribas, Cornica y historia religiosa de la Provincia de la Compaa de Jesus de Mexico en Nueva Espaa, 2 vols.
(Mexico City, 1896), 28294. Lolita Gutirrez Brockington found that 60 to 80 percent
of the permanent ranch hands on Hernando Cortss cattle ranches were black and
mulatto slaves. The Leverage of Labor: Managing the Corts Haciendas in Tehuantepec,
15881688 (Durham, NC, 1989), 12658, 17172.
24. Jane Landers, Cimarrn Ethnicity and Cultural Adaptation in the Spanish Domains of the Circum-Caribbean, 15031763, in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, ed.
Paul E. Lovejoy (London, 2000), 3054.
25. Macias, Cuba en la primera mitad del siglo XVII, 299300; Lane, Pillaging the
Empire, 1830.
26. Herbert S. Klein, The Colored Militia of Cuba: 15681868, Caribbean Studies
6 (July 1966): 1727.
27. Black soldiers defended Jamaica against English and Portuguese pirates. Carey
Robinson, The Fighting Maroons of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica, 1971), 14.
28. Lance Grahn, The Political Economy of Smuggling: Regional Informal Economies
in Early Bourbon New Granada (Boulder, 1997), 1719.
29. Violet Barbour, Privateers and Pirates of the West Indies, American Historical
Review 16 (April 1911): 53839.
30. Slaves and free blacks defended Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and the coast of
Mexico against foreign attacks in these years. Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 1035; Royal
order to the Viceroy of New Spain, July 6, 1663, Mxico, 1070, AGI, cited in Coleccin
de documentos para la historia de la formacin social de hispanoamrica 14931810, ed.
Richard Konetzke, 3 vols. (Madrid, 19531962), 3:51011.
31. Stephen Weber, Las compaas de milicia y la defensa del istmo centroamericano
en el siglo XVII: El alistamiento general de 1673, Mesoamrica 14 (December 1987):
51128; Santiago Gerardo Suarez, Las milicias: Instituciones militares hispanoamericanas (Caracas, 1984), 9095.
32. Klein, Colored Militia of Cuba, 1727; Allan J. Kuethe, The Status of the Free
Pardo in the Disciplined Militia of New Granada, Journal of Negro History 56 (April
1971): 10515.

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33. Macias, Cuba en la primera mitad del siglo XVII, 37576; Documentos relacionado con el ofrecimiento del Capitn Diego Martn, Diego El Mulato, de pasar al
servicio de Espaa, in Documentos para la historia colonial de Cuba, ed. Garca del Pino
and Cappa, 13940. Diego was also known as Diego de los Reyes and Diego Lucifer.
David F. Marley, Pirates and Privateers of the Americas (Santa Barbara, CA, 1994), 170.
34. Petition of Captain Juan Moreno, Santiago del Prado, July 13, 1677, SD 1631,
AGI, and Captain Juan Moreno to Judge Don Juan Antonio Ortiz de Matienzo, Santiago
del Prado, November 7, 1677, ibid., cited in Mara Elena Daz, The Virgin, the King, and
the Royal Slaves of El Cobre (Stanford, 2000), 70, 8992. Daz traces the title capitn for
royal slaves at the copper mines near Santiago, Cuba, to the 1620s but resists asserting
that it is an actual military title.
35. Like their counterparts in New Spain, New Granada, and other circum-Caribbean
locales, the escaped slaves created a legitimate Spanish town and a militia to defend it.
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, chap. 2.
36. Joseph P. Snchez, African Freedmen and the Fuero Militar: A Historical Overview of Pardo and Moreno Militiamen in the Late Spanish Empire, Colonial Latin
American Historical Review 3 (1994): 16584; Lyle N. McAlister, El fuero militar en la
Nueva Espaa. 17641800 (Mexico City, 1982); Allan J. Kuethe, Military Reform and
Society in New Granada, 17731808 (Gainesville, FL, 1978), 827, 3839; Christon I.
Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico, 17601810 (Albuquerque, 1977), 4, 22431;
Christon I. Archer, Pardos, Indians and the Army of New Spain: Inter-Relationships and
Conicts, 17801810, Journal of Latin American Studies 6, 2 (1974): 23155; Leon
Campbell, The Changing Racial and Administrative Structure of the Peruvian Military
Under the Later Bourbons, Americas 32 (1975): 11733; Margarita Gascn, The
Military of Santo Domingo, 17201764, Hispanic American Historical Review 73
(1993): 43152; Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the
Colonial Americas (New York, 1993), chaps. 1, 2; Ben Vinson, Bearing Arms for His
Majesty (Stanford, 2002), 25.
37. Klein, Colored Militia of Cuba; Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, Los Batallones de
Pardos y Morenos Libres (Havana, 1976); Landers, Black Society, chaps. 9, 10.
38. Cartagena had one company of quadroons, four mulatto companies, and two
black companies. Reglamento para la guarnicin de la Plaza de Cartagena de Indias,
1736, in Konetzke, Coleccin de documentos, 3:22022.
39. Leon G. Campbell, Black Power in Colonial Peru: The 1779 Tax Rebellion of
Lambayeque, Phylon 33 (Summer 1972): 14052.
40. Klein, Colored Militia of Cuba, 1727.
41. Deschamps, Battalones de Pardos, 65.
42. An Authentic Journal of the Siege of the Havana by an Ofcer (London, 1762,
reprint, 1898), 21, 30; Patrick Mackeller, A Correct Journal of the Landing of His
Majestys Forces on the Island of Cuba; and of the Siege and Surrender of the Havannah,
August 13, 1762 (London, 1762; reprint, Boston, 1762), 9.
43. Mackeller, Correct Journal, 2930.
44. Klein, Colored Militia of Cuba; Landers, Black Society, 198200; Kimberly S.
Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans,
17691803 (Durham, NC, 1887), 10935; Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 78.

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45. Hanger, Bounded Lives, 11921.

46. Runaway notice by Henry Williams, May 5, 1785, Papers on Negro Titles and
Runaways, 17841803, East Florida Papers (hereafter cited as EFP), microlm reel 167,
PKY.
47. Hector and Sam both identied Reyna as Hectors wife. Statements of Sam and
Hector, Census Returns 17841814, EFP, microlm reel 148, PKY.
48. Memorial of William Williams, March 5, 1788, Census Returns, 17841814, EFP,
microlm reel 148, PKY. By the time the Williams brothers initiated a suit to recover
Hector, Sam, and Reyna in 1788, all three had hired themselves as free laborers to Don
Francis Phelipe Fatio, whose Nueva Suiza plantation was near their former workplace.
Unable to get satisfaction from the Spanish governor, Major Williams nally submitted a
claim to the British government for a Negro woman slave valued at forty pounds
sterling, and his brother William submitted a claim for Sam, a carpenter, valued at fty
pounds. Wilbur Henry Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida, 1774 to 1785: The Most Important Documents Pertaining Thereto, Edited with an Accompanying Narrative (Deland,
FL, 1929), 2:277, 281.
49. Disputes with Georgians about contested slave property involved diplomatic negotiations of the highest order. More than 250 former slaves were freed by the Spanish
before pressure from United States Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson forced Spain to
abrogate the sanctuary provision in 1790. The freed slaves appear in the Census of 1784,
EFP, microlm reel 76, PKY.
50. Florida, Louisiana, and even Mexico received the dregs of the Spanish army, and
assignment to Florida was often a punishment for earlier misbehavior. By all accounts
even severe discipline failed to produce any signicant improvement in the character of
the Florida troops. Letters of Vicente Manuel de Zspedes, included in Mir to Caballo,
May 12, 1790, and cited in Derek Noel Kerr, Petty Felony, Slave Deance, and Frontier
Villainy: Crime and Criminal Justice in Spanish Louisiana, 17701803, Ph.D. diss.,
Tulane University, 1983, p. 194.
51. Accounts of the Royal Treasury, 17841796, Account of 1794, SD 2635, AGI.
52. Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada to Luis de Las Casas, April 21, 1794, Cuba 1439,
AGI. Recognizing the weakness of Quesadas defenses, Havana nally ordered reinforcements from the Infantry Regiment of Mexico to assist St. Augustine. The group of approximately two hundred men was commanded by Colonel Sebastin Kindeln, who
later became governor of East Florida and an advocate of its black militia. Additional
troops from Catalonia also added force.
53. C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York, 1963), 1036.
54. Jean-Franois and Toussaint both recognized that they were betraying their compatriots, and James called them traitors and their efforts Judas work. James, Black
Jacobins, 1046.
55. Ibid.
56. Robin Blackburn, The Black Jacobins and New World Slavery, in C.L.R. James:
His Intellectual Legacies, ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain (Amherst, MA,
1995), 8197, 86; James, Black Jacobins. Geggus, Blackburn, and others have contrasted

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143

the counterrevolutionary stance of Jean-Franois and Jorge Biassou with the more
truly revolutionary ideologies of Toussaint.
57. The institutional precedents that permitted Spain to treat with and enlist former
slaves into military service and to incorporate them into a Spanish polity were by this time
centuries old, and it may be presumed the men would have had some knowledge of them.
Although all three leaders agreed to the Spanish alliance, in fact, they never intended to
return to slavery under any regime and were determined to cut the best deal possible for
themselves, their kin, and their troops. Captain General Joaqun Garca to the Duque de
Alcudia, December 12, 1795, cited in Emilio Rodrguez Demorizi, Cesin de Santo Domingo a Francia (Trujillo Ciudad, D.R., 1958), 4648.
58. Twelve other subchiefs received medals of silver and documents attesting to their
meritorious service. Captain General Joaqun Garca to the Duque de la Alcudia, February 18, 1794, Estado (hereafter cited as ES) 14, doc. 86, AGI.
59. James, Black Jacobins, 124, 155.
60. Father Josef Vsquez to the Vicar of Santiago, December 12, 1793, ES 11, doc. 98,
AGI.
61. Thomas O. Ott asserts that Toussaints defection from the Spaniards was in part
motivated by his own ambition and that he felt his advancement within the Spanish camp
was blocked by Biassou and Jean-Franois. He describes Toussaints power struggle
with Biassou and Toussaints military victories over his former superior. Ott, The Haitian
Revolution, 17891804 (Knoxville, TN, 1973), 8384. Carolyn Fick agrees; see Carolyn
F. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville,
1990), 184.
62. Spanish authorities and most historians place the blame for the Bayaj massacre
on Jean-Franois, but he accused Biassou and his men of the atrocities. Jean-Franois
claimed that although General Viasou [sic] made war under the same banners as we, my
conduct, the direction of my troops, their discipline, and their military operations have
always been better. He argued that if disorders occurred after Biassous troops arrived
on the scene and he should be found culpable, Biassou should be punished as required by
the law (Jean-Franois to Luis de Las Casas, January 12, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 28, AGI).
63. James, Black Jacobins, 151. David Geggus and Julius S. Scott have examined the
lightning speed with which information was circulated about the revolution and the
powerful ability of rumors to trigger actions. David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War and
Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 17931793 (Oxford, 1982);
Julius S. Scott III, The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in
the Era of the Haitian Revolution, Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1986.
64. James, Black Jacobins, 12351; Memorial of Jean-Franois, January 14, 1796, ES
5-A, doc. 28, AGI; The Marqus of Casa Calvo to Luis de Las Casas, December 31, 1795,
ES 5-A, doc. 23, AGI.
65. Marqus de Casa Calvo to Luis de Las Casas, December 31, 1795, ES 5-A, doc.
23, AGI; Jane G. Landers, An Eighteenth-Century Community in Exile: The Floridanos
of Cuba, New West Indian Guide 70, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring 1996): 3958.
66. Marqus de Casa Calvo to Luis de Las Casas, December 31, 1795, ES 5-A, doc.
23, AGI.

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Jane Landers

67. Santo Domingos governor was already under heavy pressure from angry Spanish
citizens who were also being forced to evacuate and were urging Spanish troops to
mutiny and renounce the treaty. In such a volatile situation he did not even allow the
black troops time to dispose of their property or settle family affairs before leaving.
Joaqun Garca to the Duque de la Alcudia, February 18, 1794, ES 14, doc. 86, AGI;
Joaqun Garca to Luis de Las Casas, January 25, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 36, AGI.
68. Petition of Jorge Biassou, September 14, 1796, Cuba 1439, AGI. According to one
account, during his mothers rescue from the Hospital of the Holy Fathers in Le Cap,
Biassou murdered all the patients in their beds. Robert Debs Heinl Jr. and Nancy Gordon
Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 14921971 (Boston, 1978), 54.
69. Complaint of Jorge Biassou, May 31, 1794, ES 13, doc. 11, AGI.
70. Jean-Franois led the largest group, which consisted of 70 military ofcials, 282
soldiers, 334 women, and 94 children. Report by Luis de las Casas, January 13, 1796, ES
5-A, doc. 28, AGI. Brigadier Narciso Gil was consulted by members of the Aponte
conspiracy in Havana in 1812 and later played a role in the 1812 rebellion in Santo
Domingo. Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution, 15. Jorge Biassou had already departed for Havana with his wife and twenty-three dependents. Luis de Las Casas to
Duque de Alcudia, January, 8, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 24, AGI.
71. Rodrguez Demorizi, Cesin de Santo Domingo, 75; Luis de Las Casas to Joaqun
Garca, January 10, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 40, AGI.
72. Petition of Jean-Franois, January 12, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 28, AGI.
73. Luis de Las Casas to Jean-Franois, January 15, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 28, AGI.
74. Joaqun Garca to the Duque de Alcudia, February 2, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 36, AGI.
75. One account states that Jean-Franois ended his days as the governor of Oran
in 1820: Stphen Alexis, Black Liberator: The Life of Toussiant Louverture (London,
1949), 76.
76. Borrowing Garcas tactic, Las Casas planned to forward the unwanted blacks to a
new locale without any advance notice and hope that the next governor would receive
them. Trinidad was in need of homesteaders, and Las Casas hoped its governor might
grant them lands in keeping with the policy of repoblacin. The viceroy of New Spain had
allocated 124,451 pesos of Cubas situado for the expenses of the Black Auxiliaries, a
considerable sum, given that the Spanish governor of Florida earned 4,000 pesos that
year. However, with the viceroys approval, Cubas governor kept 100,000 pesos to cover
the expenses of the exodus and sent only 6,000 pesos each with the groups headed for
Trinidad and Truxillo, to better assure, he said, that they would be admitted there.
Presumably he planned to do the same for those of Jean-Franoiss dependents who were
headed to Campeche and Portobelo. Luis de Las Casas to Joaqun Garca, February 17,
1796, ES 5-A, doc. 52, AGI.
77. Brigadier General Villate, the mulatto commander of Guarico, also advised that
the French would be glad to receive them if they chose to return. Marqus de Casa Calvo
to Luis de Las Casas, January 12, 1796, ES 5-A, doc. 28, AGI.
78. Marriage of Jorge Jacobo and Rafaela Witten, April 12, 1796, Black Marriages,
Cathedral Parish Records, Diocese of St. Augustine Catholic Center, Jacksonville, FL,
microlm reel 284 L, PKY; Black Baptisms, vol. 2, CPR, microlm reel 284 J, entries 176,
563, 670, 799, and vol. 3, microlm reel 284 J, entry 31, PKY.

Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals

145

79. In one example, correspondence to General Biassou was addressed with the honoric Don. An unknown hand scratched out Don and wrote instead Seor. Orders
to General Biassou, 1801, Correspondence between the Governor and Subordinates on
the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers, EFP, microlm reel 55, PKY.
80. Testamentary Proceedings of Jorge Biassou, July 15, 1801, EFP, microlm reel
138, PKY. An account of Biassous dress in the early days of the slave revolt also stressed
his amboyant style. Biassou wore a richly embroidered orange-coloured costume and
sumptuous black silk scarf, spangled with silver. Alexis, Black Liberator, 43.
81. Ibid.
82. The governors cover letter assured Cubas captain general of his good conduct and
total obedience to the government[;] although at times he has been harassed by some
Frenchmen, and even by those of his own color, he has endured it without requiring any
other justice than that he asked of him. Enrique White to Conde de Santa Clara, May 24,
1799, Guerra Moderna, 6921, Archivo General de Simancas, Spain.
83. Memorials of Jorge Biassou, November 2, 1799 and December 6, 1799, EFP,
Letters from the Captain General, microlm reel 2, PKY; Marques de Someruelos to
Enrique White, March 15, 1800, and May 28, 1801, ibid.
84. Testamentary Proceedings of Jorge Biassou, entry 2, EFP, microlm reel 138, PKY.
85. Orders to Jorge Jacobo, Juan Bautista Witten, and Benjamin Segui, July 19, 1812,
To and From the military Commanders and Other Ofcers, 17841821, EFP, microlm
reel 68, PKY.
86. Lista de Revista y Comisaria, October 7, 1812, Cuba 356, AGI.
87. On the important role of black linguists in the Seminole Wars see George Klos,
Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 18211835, in The African American Heritage of Florida, ed. David R. Colburn and Jane G. Landers (Gainesville, 1992), 12856.
Even after the Spaniards left Florida, Seminoles and blacks among them maintained trade
and contacts with Spanish Cuba.
88. Edward Wanton to Sebastin Kindeln, July 3, 1812, EFP, microlm reel 61, PKY;
Sebastin Kindeln to Juan Ruz de Apodaca, August 13, 1812, Cuba 1789, AGI. Four
years later, on March 8, 1816, Governor Jos Coppinger also awarded Tony Proctor a
military service grant of 185 acres. Spanish Land Grants in Florida, 5 vols. (Tallahassee,
194041), 4:22627.
89. The governor assigned each slave to trusted members of the community, including
the free black militiaman Sandy Embara (a.k.a. Edimboro), and these men became responsible for their good behavior. Listas de los esclavos barones y en estado de tomar las
armas, July 13,1812, Cuba 357, AGI.
90. Manuel Lopez to Governor Sebastin Kindeln, August 20, 1812, and Kindelns
response, August 30, 1812, Cuba 257, AGI.
91. Landers, Black Society, chaps. 3, 10.

Arming Slaves in Brazil from the

Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth Century
hendrik kraay

In the rst paragraphs of his treatise on slavery, published in 1866

1867, the great Brazilian jurist Antonio

Marques Perdigo Malheiro outlined

the ideal legal status of slaves: They were things, subject to the power and
dominion or property of another . . . [and] deprived of all rights. He concluded that such is the extent of this incapacity that, among us, slaves are not
even permitted to serve as enlisted men [com praa] in the army and navy.
Not only were slaves excluded from the armed forces, but since the 1500s, a
host of laws, decrees, and ordinances issued by all levels of government had
barred slaves from using or carrying weapons. None of this legislation should
be surprising. As Perdigo Malheiro put it, the slave is not only reputed a
domestic enemy but also a public enemy, always quick to rebel, to rise up.
To arm slaves or to make provisions for their enlistment in armed forces
appears to be the height of folly for slaveowners, yet Brazilian history is replete
with examples of both private and public arming of slaves. An examination of
the circumstances under which Brazilians armed slaves goes to the heart of the
slave-master relationship and casts into sharp relief the role of the state in
this slave society. Central to any consideration of armed slaves is the distinction between private arming on the part of masters and public arming carried
out by authorities or the state. Masters routinely armed individual slaves (or

146

Arming Slaves in Brazil

147

groups of them) for protection or even in order to perpetrate crimes, but this
was little more than an extension of the service that slaves already owed
masters. Such slaves might also be led by their masters into serving the state in
military or quasi-military capacities, without implying a change in the slaves
status. When it came to private arming, the colonial and imperial states principal concerns were to control the diffusion of weapons among slaves, particularly those beyond masters direct supervision, and to restrict the armed
might of masters.
The direct involvement of the state in arming slaves changed matters, and
the enlistment of slaves as soldiers implied that they should gain freedom. As
Perdigo Malheiro makes clear, slave and soldier were fundamentally
different categories. Moreover, he noted the old Roman law principle that
slaves who had performed notable service for the state ought to be rewarded
with freedom; monarchs and authorities in Brazil tended to adhere to this
maxim. But any effort to turn slaves into soldiers (free men) or to free slaves
who had distinguished themselves in service to the state constituted an intrusion of state power into the domestic sphere of slave-master relations. Manumission, as Perdigo Malheiro explains, requires a voluntary act of masters,
and Manuela Carneiro da Cunha has pointed out that the Brazilian state only
rarely and very hesitantly intervened in this private sphere. All of the cases of
freeing slaves who had served as soldiers (or were to do so) raised complex
questions of property rights, compensation, and masters prerogatives; ultimately, the state could not grant freedom in return for military service. Rather,
manumission came from owners who either freed slaves willingly or did so
under moral pressure or in response to scal incentives. Three republican
rebellions against the Brazilian state in the rst half of the nineteenth century
enlisted slaves much more indiscriminately, thereby posing a grave threat to
the slave order (which at least some of their leaders contemplated ending) and
demonstrating what was unacceptable to most Brazilian slaveowners.
For most of the history of slavery in Brazil from the 1500s to abolition in
1888, the Portuguese colonies (after 1822, the independent empire) constituted the largest slave society in the Americas, receiving about four million
Africans until the close of the trade in the 1850s. Brazils slaves were concentrated on plantations, particularly those that produced sugar along the fertile
coast of the Northeast. In the nineteenth century, coffee emerged as a major
slave-plantation commodity in Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo. But slavery was
not restricted to plantations. In the early eighteenth century, the gold- and
diamond-mining boom in Minas Gerais prompted a signicant shift of the
slave population to this area. By the nineteenth century, coastal cities such as

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Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Recife boasted large concentrations of slaves as

well. In fact, slaves could be found throughout Brazil, and slave ownership
was widely diffused among the free (and the freed) populations.
At the same time that it constituted a massive slave society, Brazil boasted a
growing free and freed nonwhite population; by about 1800, the number of
free and freed Afro-Brazilians equalled the number of those enslaved; the 1872
census counted 5.75 million blacks and mulattoes, of whom only 1.5 million
were enslaved. These demographic features meant that, in Brazil, slave and
black were not roughly coterminous categories as they were in the United
States. Although some colonial legislation conated free blacks and slaves in
regulating access to weapons, the arming of slaves and the arming of black
men were largely distinct issues, something not always perceived by historians. By the eighteenth century, the Brazilian military formed a complex of
racially segregated institutions. Free coloreds served in black and mulatto
militia units, and the regular army consisted, in principle, of white men. Between 1817 and 1837 this racial segregation was abolished as the state sought
to tap fully the free nonwhite population for military service. Ironically, however, this shift turned the military into a magnet for fugitive slaves, who were
now indistinguishable from soldiers.
This chapter begins by surveying masters arming of their slaves before
exploring public arming by the state. Despite legislation that aimed to keep
arms out of the slaves hands, the private arming of slaves was fairly extensive,
particularly on the disorderly mining frontier of eighteenth-century Minas
Gerais. Elsewhere, it was rarer, though not unknown, and throughout Brazil,
concern about private arming merged into worries about the very different
practice of self-arming by slaves, usually the prelude to crimes or rebellions.
The regulation of private and self-arming by slaves was, however, no easy task
for authorities, for the policing of slaves encroached on masters private power.
Public arming by the state or in its name enters the discussion in the second
section, which examines the arming of slaves in order to regain Portuguese
control over northeastern Brazil from the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century and the extensive proposals to employ slave manpower for colonial defense during the wars with Spain in the 1760s and 1770s. The latter were never
implemented, but the Portuguese government eventually threw its weight behind the promises of freedom made to slaves in 1645 at the height of the
Dutch wars.
The rst decades of the nineteenth century saw an intensication of public
arming and, with the abolition of racial discrimination in recruitment, signicant changes in the meaning of military service. Moreover, of course, abolition
became a possibility, if only a remote one; some came to see the enlistment of

Arming Slaves in Brazil

149

slaves as a step toward the ending of slavery. The third section examines the
republican rebellions that recruited slaves on a signicant scale but ultimately
failed to respect masters rights. The fourth section examines the Brazilian
states policy toward arming slaves after independence, a policy considerably
more cautious than that of the republican rebellions. Indeed, the imperial
government never set out to arm slaves during this period, but on a number of
occasions it was forced to ratify slave enlistments by arranging for the freeing
of the slaves in question by the payment of compensation to owners. Finally,
this chapter analyzes slave recruitment during the Paraguayan War (1865
1870). Here the Brazilian state proceeded with deliberate caution, carefully
respecting masters property rights and insisting that all of the men who served
be freed prior to enlistment. During this period, the imperial government
carefully regulated slave recruitment and largely preempted the problems that
it had resolved with ex post facto manumissions earlier in the century.

Weapons Legislation, Private Arming, and Self-Arming

Concern about restricting slaves access to weapons pervaded Portuguese and Brazilian legislation from the sixteenth century onward, but no law
proved satisfactory or effective. The tools of daily work were often potential
offensive weapons, and masters frequently found it necessary to arm slaves for
their own protection. The result was a continual struggle to reconcile competing interests as the state sought to restrict weaponry and to gain a monopoly
of legitimate force while masters sought to preserve their private power, their
control over their slaves, and their right to employ slaves as they saw t. These
questions gained particular salience in nineteenth-century cities, where substantial police apparati were established to control the lower classes, slaves
included.
Monarchs, colonial governors, and municipal councils repeatedly sought to
keep weapons out of slaves hands. In 1521, for example, the king of Portugal
decreed that any Moor or captive black, upon whom might be found a
sword, dagger, or lance, not accompanying his master would be ned; if the
master refused to pay, the slave would be ogged. Not all of this voluminous
weapons legislation was addressed solely to slaves. Eighteenth-century sumptuary laws prohibited numerous classes of men from wearing swords, including hunchbacks, sailors, and blacks (negros), and there were frequent bans
on the carrying of concealable weaponspistols, short swords, and pointed
daggersthat applied to all people. The latter constituted the prohibited
weapons, so well-known that they were sometimes not even specied, as in a
1756 law that modied the punishment for slaves bearing knives and other

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Hendrik Kraay

prohibited weapons. Legislation specically addressed to slaves (and often

also to free blacks) sought to prevent them from carrying sticks and clubs. The
1830 criminal code banned the possession of offensive weapons by all but left
the denition of such arms, as well as any exemptions to the ban, to municipal
councils. In 1880 the town of Pirassununga, So Paulo, prohibited blunderbusses, revolvers, pistols, shotguns, and any [other] rearms; razors, pointed
knives, daggers, all types of swords, and any [other] cutting instrument but
permitted hunters to carry shotguns and artisans to keep the tools necessary to
their trades. Slaves were not specically mentioned in these articles, which
applied to all.
Authorities constantly tinkered with the mix of punishments for slaves caught
with such weapons. A 1738 municipal ordinance from So Paulo that banned
slaves from carrying clubs under their capes prescribed a twenty-day prison
term to be followed by a ogging. The arresting ofcer would receive the
cape as a reward, but the master paid a ne. A few years earlier, the governor of Minas Gerais ordered two hundred lashes and two months in jail for
slave offenders. Mid-eighteenth-century innovationsnotably the sentencing
of slave violators to ten-year terms of galley servicewere quickly dropped in
favor of increasing the number of lashes (up to ve hundred over the course of
ten days, according to a 1756 law). In 1816 a police edict in Rio de Janeiro
mandated three hundred lashes and three months of labor on public works for
slaves found in possession of weapons, but this was reduced to summary
oggings in 1825. Nineteenth-century municipal ordinances typically mandated nes for free offenders and oggings for slaves; thus, in 1833, the city of
Salvador banned the sale of pointed knives and daggers, prescribing a 30 milris ($22.80) ne and eight days in prison for the free but 150 lashes for slave
offenders.
The repetition of this legislation indicates, of course, that it was unenforceable. Too many slaves used knives and machetes in their daily labors, and too
many worked beyond the direct control of an overseer. Moreover, the free
(and slaves) often went about armed, at least with a knife. In the second
decade of the nineteenth century, the traveler Henry Koster observed that, in
Pernambuco, a pointed knife or dirk . . . though prohibited by law, is worn
by all ranks of persons, which, if we can accept iconographic evidence, included slaves: four of Johann Moritz Rugendass well-known engravings from
the 1820s show slaves openly wearing daggers, notwithstanding the polices
standing orders to search and disarm slaves. In Rio de Janeiro, simple weapons possession accounted for a signicant proportion of slave arrests between
1810 and 1821 (5.8 percent), and when slaves arrested for other offenses but
found to have weapons of some sort are added, the proportion rises to 22.4

Arming Slaves in Brazil

151

percent of 3,682 arrests. Of course, such data are not true indications of the
incidence of the practice, but police in the capital considered it a major problem until at least the mid-nineteenth century, when the proportion of slaves in
the citys population began to decline. Knives, razors, and other cutting tools
were, by far, the most common weapons conscated. Many of the other
instruments that slaves used in the course of their daily work could be dangerous weapons: Hoes and axes could easily be turned on masters or overseers. Not surprisingly, an 1847 coffee plantation manual recommended keeping sickles both sharp and under lock and key when not in use.
Moreover, excessively restrictive legislation and zealous enforcement would
unduly burden masters and encroach on their private power over slaves. Imprisoning slaves deprived masters of necessary labor and introduced what
was, for owners, an unwelcome state authority into their relations with their
slaves. It reportedly encouraged masters to turn a blind eye to their slaves
offenses. The governor of Minas Gerais complained in 1719 that owners
cover[ed] up their [slaves] crimes and outrages, even when they are themselves victims, so as not to lose their property. Thus, it was more acceptable
to commute prison terms to oggings, after which the slave could immediately
return to work. Even this practice, however, could upset masters. When the
governor of Rio de Janeiro sought to impose summary oggings on slaves
caught with weapons in 1730, he faced vigorous opposition from owners.
Blanket bans on slaves possession of actual or potential weapons encroached
on masters rights to use their slaves in whatever occupations they saw t.
Thus, much of the legislation directed at slaves with weapons exempted, as did
the 1521 law, those armed with their owners permission or accompanied by
their masters. Lawmakers principal concern was to restrict slaves independent access to weapons; secondarily, they sought to limit the number of armed
slave retainers under masters control.
As much of this legislation suggests, Brazilian masters routinely armed
their slaves, especially on the lawless frontiers. The best evidence comes from
eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, then a rapidly developing gold-mining region, where authorities correspondence is replete with complaints about the
practice. Given the rugged topography, dispersed nature of placer mining, and
lack of effective government authority, masters such as Sebastio Pereira de
Aguilar armed slaves for their own protection. In 1716 he owned a brace of
pistols for himself and twenty rearms for the forty-nine slaves who mined
for him. Governors struggled to restrict the number of such bodyguards that
each owner could maintain, seeking both to prevent the diffusion of weapons
among slaves and to control the power of the mining lords, but they also relied
on the slaves of loyal masters who helped suppress the tax rebellions of 1715

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Hendrik Kraay

and 1720. In these episodes and in the violent squabbles between established
miners and newcomers to Minas Gerais (the War of the Emboabas, 1708
1710), much of the ghting on both sides was done by armed slaves.
Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais appears to have been somewhat peculiar
in this respect, and the deliberate arming of slaves elsewhere generally took
place on a smaller scale. A remarkable illustration from 1651 shows a Dutchcontrolled sugar plantation in Pernambuco being defended from Portuguese
attack by its slaves (regarding the Dutch Wars, see the following section).
Armed with spears and clubs, the slaves ght on their ownthe artist shows
no white men leading themwhile their companions keep on working at the
mill. In the 1830s, in the remote interior, men took justice into their own
hands, according to Rugendas, who claimed that slaves readily took on the
task of defending their [masters] interests. In 1868 the commander of a press
gang reported that he could impress only two excellent recruits on a Bahian
sugar plantation before being driven off by a dozen armed men, including a
mounted slave, armed with a long-handled sickle, who dextrously knocked off
the recruiters kpi. Land disputes were routinely the occasion for masters to
arm their slaves and to lead them in the destruction of rivals crops and buildings; slaves of two rival sugar planters in Pernambuco, noted Koster, were
constantly at war with each other in the rst decade of the century. Historians of slave crime have discovered cases in which masters incited slaves to
commit offenses, including murder. A few slave occupations required that
their practitioners be armed with guns. According to Jean-Baptiste Debret,
armed slave retainers were indispensable to travelers in the early nineteenth
century, for they doubled as hunters and bodyguards. Trained for these tasks
since their adolescence, these expert woodsmen were also essential to the
naturalists who depended on them to stock their collections. In all of these
cases, slaves were led by masters or carried out their owners will.
Although authorities constantly worried that such private arming contributed to the uncontrolled diffusion of weapons among slaves, it is difcult to
determine how readily slaves obtained offensive weapons beyond tools, improvised arms such as clubs, or simple knives. Certainly a few could acquire
rearms in order to commit crimes. In 1794, Manoel da Paixo, a slave tailor,
was arrested while carrying a musket and a pistol with which he intended to
kill the overseer of a Rio de Janeiro plantation who had beaten a female slave,
presumably Manoels lover. He was summarily sentenced to receive ve hundred lashes over the course of ten days, and the weapons were conscated.
Eighty years later, in Campinas, a coffee planters son attempted to stop one
Anastcio from stealing a sack of coffee, only to be shot dead by the slave,
prompting complaints that petty shopkeepers in the region not only readily

Arming Slaves in Brazil

153

bought stolen coffee but also willingly sold rearms to slaves. In 1836 the
province of Rio de Janeiro had felt it necessary to require dealers in gunpowder and weapons to sign an undertaking that they would not sell them to
slaves or to otherwise suspect individuals. Complaints from Bahia in the
1820s suggest a wide diffusion of weapons among slaves. In 1822 the patriot
government, then leading a bitter siege of Portuguese troops holed up in Salvador, felt obliged to remind sugar planters not to permit their slaves to have
in the huts where they live muskets, lances, iron spears, scythes, cutlasses,
swords and knives. A few years later, the Baron of Maragogipe, a large
planter and militia commander, complained that many of his neighbors let
their slaves wander on the roads and public paths armed with all sorts of
offensive weapons, which the law prohibits even to free men. Maragogipes
remarks and the patriot governments advisory, with their implication that
masters condoned the possession of signicant weaponry by slaves, are remarkable in light of the slave rebellions that had rocked Bahia after 1807, but
they may also reect the diffusion of weapons into the civilian population as a
consequence of the war for independence .
The records of the suppression of slave rebellions, by contrast, provide
mixed evidence about the ease with which slaves armed themselves. Runaway
slave communities, the well-known quilombos, reportedly found it easy to
trade for powder, shot, and other weapons in eighteenth-century Bahia and in
nineteenth-century Maranho; in 1838, coffee-plantation slaves plotting a
revolt in the interior of Rio de Janeiro managed to acquire a great quantity of
gunpowder in barrels with the aid of a peddler who made the purchases
(notwithstanding the undertaking that he must have signed). More remarkable
yet was a report from the Brazilian consul in Hamburg that four thousand
swords destined for slaves [negros] were being loaded on a ship set to sail to
Bahia in 1832; the minister of justice took this report seriously enough to warn
the provincial government of Alagoas. Nonetheless, rebel slaves were invariably outgunned by the forces of order, and no quilombo, save the exceptionally
large and long-lived Palmares (c. 16001695), could withstand a determined
onslaught (the fugitives usually retreated). The lengths to which some slave
rebels went to improvise weaponry suggest that it was actually quite difcult
for them to acquire sufcient arms; others made do with what they had at
hand. According to a denunciation received in 1814, Hausa slaves in Salvador
had produced enough darts and arrowheads out of scrap iron to ll several
barrels. The revolt did not materialize, but authorities failed to locate the
stores. Although the 150 rebel slaves of 1838 may have had much gunpowder,
they lacked sufcient rearms; they courageously faced down the National
Guard force pursuing them but were dispersed by a few volleys. In 1835, when

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Hendrik Kraay

several hundred Muslim slaves rebelled in Salvador (the largest urban slave
uprising in the Americas), their principal weapons were knives, swords, and
clubs, the former likely tools of work and the latter easily made. They had a
handful of pistols and an arsenal of fteen rearms that a freed gunsmith
failed to deliver on time.
Writing about eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Kathleen J. Higgins concludes that armed slaves were the rule rather than the exception. Elsewhere in Brazil, when conditions resembled those of Minas Gerais at that
time, masters readily armed slaves. But even on the most disorderly frontier,
masters were highly selective with regard to whom they armed, giving weapons only to the slaves whom they trusted. In these areas, authorities struggled
to restrict the private arming of slaves, fearing that it led to self-arming by
slaves. But it proved singularly difcult to dene the categories of potential
offensive weapons to be prohibitedmany were, after all, merely toolsand
colonial legislation routinely permitted slaveowners to maintain slave bodyguards even as it sought to control slaves access to weapons outside of masters control. As the police records from nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro
show, keeping knives (and other arms) out of slaves hands was a major preoccupation. To be sure, such armed slaves did not pose a mortal threat to
the slave regime, but they were dangerous enough that they had to be kept
in check.

The Dutch Wars (16301654) and

Colonial Defense (1600s1810)
Portugals Brazilian colonies faced external threats as well as internal
ones. Foreign invaders and colonial defenders understood that slaves might be
useful resources in the struggle for power. As early as 1618, a Dutchman
concluded that the principal local defense [forces] of Rio de Janeiro were the
indigenous slaves of the Portuguese, so obedient that they go into battle for
their masters. By contrast, during the 1711 sack and ransoming of Rio de
Janeiro by French privateers, observers marveled at the ignominious defeat of
the Portuguese, who had failed to make use of their available slaves, estimated
at eight thousand. The French, however, were relieved that the city capitulated
before the governor of Minas Gerais arrived with three thousand soldiers and
six hundred slaves, all with considerable combat experience from the civil war
there. The use of slaves in colonial defense raised issues quite different from
those posed by private arming, primarily when the state requisitioned slaves or
drafted them into the armed forces, and authorities had to consider property
rights, the legal status of slave-soldiers, and racial questions.

Arming Slaves in Brazil

155

These issues were rst posed by the lengthy struggle against the Dutch West
India Company, which captured Recife in 1630 and held it until 1654, facing
almost continual armed resistance from local sugar planters. The Portuguese
were initially reluctant to use slaves in anything other than support roles, but
in 1633 the Portuguese commander, Matias de Albuquerque, accepted the
services of a free (or possibly freed) black man, Henrique Dias, who had
organized a black guerrilla force that included some runaway slaves. Albuquerque, however, stipulated that Dias henceforth accept only free or freed
blacks into his forces, and he personally indemnied the owners of the slaves
already serving under Dias. In 1645, sugar planters who had previously
accepted Dutch rule rebelled. In the proclamation that launched the War of
Divine Liberty, their leaders, Joo Fernandes Vieira and Antonio

Cavalcanti
Capibaribe, pledged that every black [negro], Arda, Mina, Angola, creole,
mulatto, mtis [mameluco], freed or slave, who does his duty in defense of
divine liberty will be freed and paid for all that he may do. This is a curious
document in that it promises freedom to those who were already freed and
makes no mention of compensation to the masters. The degree to which this
measure was sanctioned by King Joo IV is not known, and Vieira only later
claimed to have received royal orders to this effect. Moreover, the proclamation appears to be directed at slaves. His actions, however, made it clear that
Vieira had no intention of letting his slaves escape his control. At a critical
moment in the Battle of Monte de Tabocas (3 August 1645), he offered freedom to fty of his Mina and Angolan slaves if they would throw themselves
into the fray; contemporary accounts concur that this was the battles turning
point. Although Vieira and Capibaribes proclamation implied that the state
would free slaves, this was a private manumission, conditioned on the freedmens serving for the duration of the war.
The Tabocas freedmen joined other black men under Henrique Diass command, but the total number of slaves enrolled remained small, with Diass
troop rarely numbering more than three hundred men. Slaves were simply too
valuable to be removed from sugar plantations and armed on any large scale.
Although Vieira had conditionally freed his slaves in 1645, other owners had
not. The nephew and heir of one sugar planter claimed that his uncle had
merely lent Gonalo Rebelo and several other slaves to the troops. Thirteen
years later, he tried to put Rebelo back to work on the plantation, going so far
as to burn the slave-soldiers service record. Unlike Vieira at Tabocas, Rebelos
master had not freed his slaves before sending them into battle. Such treatment of his soldiers prompted Dias to travel in 1657 to Lisbon, where he
obtained royal sanction for the proclamations promising freedom in the monarchs name. The queen directed that the slaves in question be freed with the

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permission of their owners, hoping that the rich ones would do so voluntarily
and that the poor ones would be content with moderate compensation.
Furthermore, she mandated that Diass troop be organized into a militia regiment (tero) into which the newly freed men would be enlisted.
The 1657 royal decision (like the 1645 proclamation) is signicant for what
it did not dofree slaves outright. Manumission was the private prerogative
of slaveowners, and slavery rested on respect for masters private power. Thus,
Portuguese monarchs could grant freedom only with owners permission; in
this sense, they were far from absolute rulers. These concerns about masters
property rights and their control over manumission recurred in all of the
subsequent episodes of slave recruitment, and the colonial and imperial Brazilian states never willingly went further than they did in 1657, at best strongly
encouraging owners to free slaves. Unfortunately, there is no indication in the
existing literature of how authorities prevailed on men like Rebelos owner to
sign manumission papers, but judging by the aftermath of the war for independence in the 1820s, this was probably a difcult task for Pernambucos governors. Enlisting those freed into a military corporation likely allayed masters
concerns about the postmanumission control of these freedmen.
The War of Divine Liberty also raised racial questions for the Luso-Brazilian
patriots. A clear segregation prevailed in the patriot forces, with black, mulatto, and indigenous units operating separately from the main white forces, a
pattern reiterated when Diass troop became a separate militia regiment. By
the early eighteenth century, such segregation had become rmly established
in the Brazilian armed forces. In principle, the regular armys rank and le was
to consist of white men, and several visitors to early nineteenth-century Brazil
remarked on the advantages that free and freed black men enjoyed during
impressment drives because they could not be forcibly enlisted. In practice,
by the end of the colonial period, it had become acceptable to enlist men of
mixed race, but the exclusion of blacks from the army remained on the books
until 1837 and appears to have been respected. The free and freed black men
excluded from the regular army were instead enlisted in segregated militia
companies and battalions formed throughout Brazil; the militia was abolished
in 1831, replaced by a formally color-blind National Guard.
Slaves were, of course, exempt from recruitment into the regular armys
rank and le and from service in the militia, but during the wars between Spain
and Portugal in the 1760s and 1770s, authorities in Brazil and Portugal considered arming them. In 1762, Bahias government instructed Salvadors city
council to conduct a census of the slave population, ordering masters to arm
their slaves with muskets and bayonets or spears, and authorities in Rio de
Janeiro were apparently advised to do the same. In the mid1770s, another

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round of Luso-Spanish conict prompted further consideration of arming

slaves. The viceroy outlined a complex plan to organize Rio de Janeiros slaves
into an auxiliary force armed with lances, spears, muskets, [or] bows and
arrows. The men were to be divided into companies with slave ofcers. He
ordered the governor of Minas Gerais to do the same, and in early 1777, local
authorities there received instructions to levy half of each owners slaves for
this purpose. Fearing that a Spanish naval force was headed for Bahia, the
Portuguese government ordered that all of the colonys slaves be armed with
spears, and the governor of Bahia complied, instructing slaveowners in the
sugar-plantation hinterland to prepare to send their spearmen to Salvador,
where there were already 5,510 slaves capable of bearing arms. Authorities
did not envisage that the slaves so mobilized would be freed, except for those
who distinguished themselves in combat or volunteered to man reships. Were
owners unwilling to free these men, the treasury would pay compensation.
Although most of these slave mobilizations never took place because the
Spanish invasion did not materialize, they were controversial. The governor of
So Paulo refused to contemplate arming slaves with guns, considering this
too dangerous. Local ofcials in Minas Gerais reported rumors among slaves
that they had been freed by these levies; others talked about deserting to the
enemy as a way to win their liberty. It is difcult to assess such local resistance to slave drafts, for raising the specter of slave revolt might have simply
been a way for masters to protect their property. In the early 1800s, new
concerns emerged when these defense plans were reevaluated. The French
occupation of Portugal and the ight of the monarchy to Brazil in 18071808
again raised the possibility of foreign invasion, and the government of Bahia
revived the proposal that, in the event of alarm, all able-bodied male slaves
be armed with lances to reinforce the captaincys troops. This context, however, was completely different from that of the 1770s, given the general fears
prompted by the Haitian Revolution and the far more immediate examples of
the 1807 and 1809 slave revolts in Bahia. The measure drew a stiff rebuke
from Rio de Janeiro, and the inspector-general lamely defended himself by
arguing that Bahias slaves were accustomed to the blindest obedience and
that one owner with a whip causes the greatest terror among a hundred
slaves. Such obedience could no longer be taken for granted.
Late-colonial defense plans for the use of armed slaves did not, except in
special circumstances, envisage that slaves be freed as a reward for their service, nor did they consider enrolling slaves in the regular army. Rather, they
treated slaves as property that could be requisitioned in case of invasion. As
long as discrimination in recruitment for the regulars persisted, moreover,
the vast majority of slaves would be ineligible to serve as soldiers on racial

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grounds as well. In these respects, the eighteenth-century plans differed signicantly from those for the Dutch Wars, during which the slaves became soldiers
and after which the monarchy threw its moral authority and scal resources
behind the promise to free slaves who had helped expel the invaders. Had any
of the principal slave plantation or mining districts been invaded (rather than
simply raided, as Rio de Janeiro was in 1710 and 1711), matters might have
been different. Instead, the slave mobilizations remained largely on paper. The
rejection of the Bahian defense proposal in 1810 put an end to ofcial consideration of this form of arming slaves, but within a few years, the issue returned
in very different forms.

Revolutionary and Republican Arming of Slaves, 18171845

Brazil was, in many ways, a latecomer to the Age of Revolution. While
the tiny educated elite imbibed Enlightenment ideals and the upheavals of the
American, French, and Haitian Revolutions worried colonial authorities, the
arrival of the Portuguese monarchy in 1808 prevented the outbreak of largescale revolutionary independence struggles comparable to those of Spanish
America. In 1822 Brazil gained its independence from Portugal in the form of
an empire as Pedro I, son of the king of Portugal, broke with a new liberal
government in Lisbon, which had recalled his father and sought to reduce
Brazils political status as a part of the monarchy equal to Portugal, granted in
1815. The Brazilian empire is thus often seen as a continuation of the old
regime, particularly in its maintenance of slavery. Despite British pressure,
the slave trade persisted until the early 1850s, and the rst emancipation
measurea free womb lawwas passed only in 1871. Such an emphasis
on continuities, however, misses the signicant changes that took place in the
rst third of the century. Some began to question the legitimacy and utility of
slavery on moral, ethical, and sometimes racial grounds, arguing that Brazil
would be better off with free laborers and white immigrants. Formal racial
discrimination against free people of color largely disappeared from the countrys legislation.
Moreover, the new imperial regime was not accepted by all. Between 1817
and 1848 several major regional rebellions challenged the social and political
order in the country. Led by disaffected regional elite factions, these movements were liberal and republican in orientation, drawing extensive support
from the lower classes. Three of them systematically recruited slaves and left
detailed records of the debate about slave recruitment within their leadership.
Although generally more sympathetic to abolition than the Brazilian government, none of these movements formally ended slavery. Some of their leaders,

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however, saw slave recruitment as a stage in gradual emancipation. Each of

these rebellions initiated slave recruitment cautiously, but military necessity
eventually forced them to undertake more widespread levies of slaves that
failed to respect masters property rights. In this sense, they marked a profound challenge to the slave order; Brazilian authorities subsequently singled
out the rebel slave-soldiers for especially harsh treatment.
The rst and shortest of these rebellions broke out in Recife, Pernambuco,
in March 1817, well before Brazils independence. The rebels initially drew
extensive support from local notables, including sugar planters, and the movement is usually interpreted as a rejection of the centralization of power in Rio
de Janeiro. The arming of slaves during this rebellion took place on several
levels. A number of sugar planters marched to Recife at the head of groups of
armed slaves and other dependents. Smaller slaveowners also armed their
slaves at the start of the revolt, while one of their leaders drafted his slaves to
police the city. Some of the armed slaves were highly enthusiastic supporters of
the rebellion, including one who bore a sword, followed his master, and declared himself ready to serve the fatherland, adding that he looked forward
to decapitating white soldiers.
This private arming of slaves and rebel ideologues principled opposition to
slavery deeply worried slaveowners, but the republican government quickly
moved to reassure them in a proclamation that, as clearly as any document,
reveals the issues that bedeviled so many liberals during the Age of Revolution. While proclaiming themselves to be in favor of ending slavery, the rebels declared that they would implement only a gradual, regular, and legal
emancipation that respected property rights, the basis of all orderly society.
Louis F. Tollenare, a Frenchman who stayed in Recife during the revolt, judged
that the declaration put to rest the worries. In late April, with Recife under
a strict naval blockade and royalist forces (including some masters leading
armed slaves) closing in by land, the republic decreed a state of emergency and
called on one thousand slaves to enlist in its army, promising them freedom
and the rights of citizenship. Masters would have to content themselves with
an indemnity after the war. Tollenare feared that this was the prelude to a
general emancipation and argued vigorously against the proposal with a fanatic rebel government member. Within a month of this proclamation,
however, royalists were back in control of Recife, and authorities returned the
slaves to their masters, but not before brutally ogging them.
The Sabinada Rebellion in Bahia twenty years later shared much with the
republican movement in Recife. A radical liberal reaction to a conservative
turn of the imperial government, this revolt was strongly supported by Salvadors army garrison at its outbreak on November 7, 1837. Its leaders

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sought to reassure slaveowners by declaring that they considered abolition to

be supine stupidity, but loyalist authorities coordinating the siege of Salvador by planter-led National Guardsmen worried that desperate rebels would
undertake extreme measures, including freeing slaves to enlist in their army.
The rebel forces attracted runaway slaves, and apparently some ofcers welcomed these men into their ranks, despite the opposition of the rebel minister
of war, who ordered them returned to their owners. In early January 1838,
the rebel government tried to impose order on slave recruitment by creating a
special freedmens battalion, which would enlist Brazilian-born slaves; masters were to be compensated by the payment of one-half of the slaves salary up
to a price set by the Treasury. This unit explicitly excluded the majority of
Salvadors slaves, the African-born, who were perceived as dangerous aliens,
incapable of obtaining the same status as the Brazilian-born. In late February
1838, as the siege of Salvador tightened, the rebels decreed the freedom of all
creole slaves capable of taking up arms in the rebellions defense, apparently
without compensation to the masters.
The Sabinada did not long survive this measure; its defenses collapsed in
mid-March, amid bitter ghting in which numerous rebels were massacred, no
doubt many of the armed slaves among them. A few rebel slaves are known to
have been deported to Africa, but most were returned to their owners. There
are no indications that authorities punished slaves prior to returning them, but
the massacre of Sabinada defenders may have served the same purpose as did
the public oggings in Recife in 1817. No doubt masters dealt with their slaves
privately; some sold rebel slaves to unsuspecting buyers in other provinces. An
owner in Rio Grande do Sul reported in 1850 that his Bahian-born slave Luiz
had ed to Montevideo in 1848; only after this did he learn that Luiz had
served in the ranks of the rebels of that province during Sabinos time [the
Sabinada].
The issues raised by the republican revolts of 1817 and 18371838 recurred
in the Farroupilha Rebellion (18351845). Led by ranchers in the southern
province of Rio Grande do Sul, this was the longest regional rebellion in
imperial Brazil. As in the other revolts, its slaveowning leaders rejected immediate abolition, but they strongly adhered to the principle that military
service in defense of the rebellion implied freedom for slaves, and some of the
rebels saw slave recruitment as a step toward abolition. They quickly organized two battalions of Black Lancers, apparently under the command of
white ofcers. At their peak, the Lancers may have enrolled as many as nine
hundred men, a good number of them slaves of loyalist masters who had ed
to the rebels to take up their offer of freedom. Some rebel masters donated
slaves to the Farroupilha revolt or brought them along with free dependents.

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The rebel government, however, went further, ordering the seizure of ablebodied slaves from those unsupportive of their cause. Over-eager recruiters
sometimes failed to respect even rebel masters property rights, prompting the
rebels acting war minister to order in 1841 that all slave recruits be held for
sixty days prior to enlistment so that pro-Farroupilha owners could reclaim
those improperly drafted. After that, they would be formally enlisted with no
possibility of discharge.
To their credit, most of the Farroupilha leaders staunchly defended their
soldiers freedom. In 1838, when the imperial government threatened to administer between two hundred and one thousand lashes to any captured rebel
slaves, the rebel government pledged to execute one randomly selected imperial ofcer for each free man of color ogged by the Brazilian forces. As
the stalemate between imperial and Farroupilha forces ground on in the early
1840s, divisions in the rebel leadership manifested themselves; the so-called
majority lost ground to a more conservative minority committed to negotiating a settlement with the imperial government. A major stumbling block in the
parleys was the postwar status of the Lancers. The Farroupilha representatives
did not want them returned to slavery (on principle and perhaps also because
such veterans would have made poor slaves). Although reluctant to reward
rebel slaves with liberty, the imperial government entertained this possibility
in the late 1830s and early 1840s but failed to establish a satisfactory policy for dealing with such newly freed men. A conservative cabinet secretly
planned to deport the most dangerous to Africa and use the rest in public
works, and a subsequent liberal ministry considered drafting them into the
army. In secret negotiations that are still the subject of heated controversy,
the imperial commander, the Baron (later Duke) of Caxias, and David Canabarro, the principal leader of the minority, arranged a massacre of black soldiers at the so-called Surprise of Porongas (November 14, 1844), in which
eighty of them were killed. In the subsequent peace treaty signed at Ponche
Verde (February 28, 1845), the rebels pledged to turn over the remaining
Lancers to the imperial government, which undertook to respect their freedom
(and intended to remove them from the province). Caxias shortly thereafter
received 120 freedmen, whom he attached to one of his cavalry corps pending
their transfer to Rio de Janeiro. Later that year, the imperial government
established procedures for paying compensation (up to a maximum value of
400 mil-ris, or US$208) to the masters dispossessed by these terms; the former rebels were described as individuals who, having been slaves, are now
free in consequence of the events in Rio Grande do Sul. Parliament nally
allocated the necessary funds in the budget for 184950. Unfortunately, no
historian has yet succeeded in documenting the nal fate of those turned over

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to the imperial government, but some of the Farroupilhas slave-soldiers escaped altogether by eeing to Uruguay or Paraguay.
In the 1817 rebellion and in the Farroupilha (but less so in the Sabinada),
republicans favored gradual emancipation while rejecting immediate abolition, seeing the freeing of slaves as a step toward the end of slavery. In so
doing, they had moved beyond employing them in military capacities but
keeping them in bondage, as late colonial military plans had envisaged. Military necessity forced them to go further, and the general appeals for a thousand slaves (1817) or all creoles (1838) to take up arms as well as the Farroupilhas seizure of its enemies slaves were particularly objectionable, for
these indiscriminate measures failed to respect masters property rights and
their exclusive control over manumissions. Ultimately, Brazilian authorities
perceived these rebellions as grave threats to the slave order. Hence the brutal
treatment meted out to the slave-soldiers in 1817, 1838, and 1844. Not surprisingly, too, the Sabinadas leadership was charged with fomenting slave
insurrection, a crime that carried the death penalty under the 1830 criminal
code; relative military success and the peace treaty ensured that the Farroupilha leaders avoided all criminal charges.

Ratifying Slave Enlistments: Independence and Its Aftermath

Although the rebellions in Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio Grande do Sul
went much further than the Brazilian state did at this timeand would ever
doin inviting slaves to join their forces and in seizing slaves to serve as
soldiers, the Brazilian army unexpectedly found itself accepting slaves into its
ranks in the 1820s. Several related developments contributed to this innovation. The gradual elimination of racial discrimination in recruitment for the
regulars between 1817 and 1837 constituted part of the context. More immediately important was the local recruitment of slaves during the war for independence in Bahia, which the empire reluctantly ratied by arranging to free
the slaves in 1823. By the 1840s, the army also established a policy of freeing
the occasional runaway slave who had distinguished himself in the ranks,
while returning most fugitives. These constituted ex post facto manumissions
of enlisted slaves, and all entailed compensation to the owner.
In 1817 the colonial government created an army battalion of freed blacks
[ pretos], to be stationed in recently conquered Montevideo. A number of
additional units of freedmen were created in subsequent years, including an
artillery battalion in Rio de Janeiro. By the creation of these units, the imperial government apparently sought to tap freed manpower, carefully segregating freedmen from the rest of the regular army and usually stationing them

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on the dangerous war-torn southern frontier. Yet recruitment orders issued

during the 1820s reveal that only already free or freed black men were to be
enlisted in these units. No one gained his freedom through service in these
units, but their creation gradually changed the armys racial composition.
Although Brazil gained independence relatively quickly and easily, signicant ghting took place around the city of Salvador, Bahia, in 1822 and 1823.
During this struggle, some slaves were enlisted in the patriot forces, but no
promises of freedom were issued, leaving the Brazilian state with a delicate
problem to resolve after the war. The origins of this military struggle lay in the
defeat of local troops by Portuguese forces in early 1822. A few months later,
patriot planters in the surrounding sugar-growing districts established an Interim Council of Government in the town of Cachoeira, proclaimed their
loyalty to Pedro I (then moving toward his nal break with Lisbon), and
organized a ragtag army to besiege the city. From Rio de Janeiro, Pedro
sent arms, a contingent of regulars, and a French ofcer, Pierre Labatut, to
command the patriot forces. Shortly after his arrival, Labatut requested that
the council supply as many freed mulattoes and blacks as possible to ll
a projected Emperors Battalion of Constitutional and Independent Freedmen,
a measure parallel to the Brazilian governments decision to create units of
freedmen in 1817. Labatut apparently did not wait for the council to consider
his proposal and began to ll the battalion with creoles and Africans seized
from absent Portuguese planters; as a result, rumors spread that any slave who
volunteered would be freed, all of which the council considered appalling.
With no end in sight to the siege of Salvador and manpower shortages
looming, Labatut proposed in April 1823 that the council arrange a voluntary
contribution of slaves from Bahias planters. The council balked, calling on
Labatut to exercise more caution and recommending that municipal councils
be consulted rst, but Labatut insisted, sending two ofcers from his eld
headquarters to Cachoeira to supervise this levy. A week later, the municipal
council of Jaguaripe advised, as might be expected, that Labatuts proposal
was a great error. Not only were there few surplus slaves in the municipality,
but slaves lacked the honor and disinterestedness of worthy sons of Mars;
only the opportunity to sack enemy property would motivate them to ght.
More important, concluded the council, the selection of slaves for military
service would have disastrous results because those not freed would join the
slave-soldiers in rebellion. Nothing came of this levy, for Labatut was deposed
in May 1823, but talk of it caused a great stir: mulattoes [ pardos, cabras] and
creoles speak of nothing else, reported the council.
What motivated Labatut to recruit slaves is not clear. Little is known about
him save that as an unemployed Napoleonic junior ofcer (with a checkered

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career) he had found his way to Gran Colombia very early in the nineteenth
century, briey serving in Simn Bolivars forces. There he likely witnessed
Bolivars emancipation proclamations and the large-scale enlistments of slaves
into the Spanish-American patriot forces. Labatut, however, acted much
more cautiously than the Liberator. His recruitment of slaves was, above all,
an ad hoc expedient, and he apparently never formally or informally called on
slaves to join the Bahian patriots in return for freedom (I have located no such
promise and none of his many enemies later accused him of making one).
Despite his reputation for imperiousness, he actually displayed considerable
respect for Brazilian masters property rights, repeatedly consulting with the
council and only enlisting slaves who belonged to absent Portuguese planters
without Brazilian heirs. On this level, the conict between Labatut and the
council simply involved the disposition of valuable war booty. Of course, the
issue could not be limited to debate between the two parties, for many slaves
took matters into their own hands. The patriot camps attracted runaways,
some of whom were put to work as orderlies and porters, while other fugitives
were enlisted as free men in the patriot forces.
The patriots victory, which came after the Portuguese evacuation on July 2,
1823, thus left unresolved the status of the slaves serving in their forces.
Labatuts successor recommended that these men be freed, and with remarkable rapidity, Pedro I ordered the Bahian government to arrange for this. His
ruling explained that these slaves services merited the reward of freedom and
that it would be incompatible with the principles of justice and his own
generous and magnanimous sentiments to leave them in bondage. As the
queen had in 1657, Pedro hoped that the owners would freely manumit their
slaves; if not, the government would pay compensation. Many individual
owners eventually accepted compensation and relinquished their property
rights, and freed soldiers occasionally surface in later documentation, including a Nago (or Yoruba) who testied at the trial of the 1835 slave rebels.
Other owners fought their slaves claims through the imperial bureaucracy
and judiciary, with some cases dragging on for years. From Itaparica Island,
the merchant-planter and local military governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio

de Souza Lima, wrote in 1825, expressing views shared by many masters: Here no slave served during the campaign . . . because there were no
orders issued for this. Nor have I considered that this benet [of freedom]
should be extended beyond the battalion of freedmen created [by Labatut]. . . .
Some slaves performed services here but they were those who ed from the city
or those who, abandoned by their owners, wandered about the countryside,
perpetrating robberies and disorders. They were returned to their owners as
soon as they requisitioned them. By minimizing slaves services and denying

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their status as soldiers, the planters who had opposed slave enlistment in the
rst place continued the struggle to protect their property. Some ofcers, in
turn, defended their subordinates against masters claims as both groups argued about the demarcation between slave and soldier, a line that all agreed
ought to exist and ought to be clear.
It is, unfortunately, not known how many slaves gained their freedom as a
result of service in the war for independence. The freedmens battalion numbered 327 men in July 1823, but some of its soldiers had probably been
freedmen before the war, and some slaves had fought in other units. Those
freed as a consequence of the war usually remained in Salvadors garrison as
soldiers; apparently most were segregated into one battalion, composed in its
majority of freedmen and other members of the [racially] mixed classes,
according to an observer. This unit mutinied in October 1824, providing a
justication for the Brazilian government to remove black and freed soldiers
from Salvadors garrison and to send them to the black battalions on the
southern frontier.
The recruitment of slaves in the struggle for independence has some similarities with that of the Dutch Wars, insofar as the free status of the slavesoldiers was denitively established only after the successful conclusion of the
conict. No promises of freedom comparable to Vieira and Capibaribes proclamation of 1645, however, were recorded in 1822 and 1823. The 1823 decision to free slaves applied only to those who had fought as soldiers, and it was
ofcially justied as a reward for services granted by a just and magnanimous
emperor. As in 1657, the monarch could not free slaves; he could only encourage owners to do so. Of course, authorities must have also recognized that it
was folly to attempt to return such soldiers to servitude (but individual owners
attempted to do so, as they had in the 1650s). The next best thing was to keep
them rmly under the control of the army hierarchy, and by 1825, the Bahian
masters who had opposed the freeing of slaves were further reassured by the
removal of the freed soldiers from the province.
The creation of black battalions after 1817 and the freeing of the slaves
enlisted by Labatut gradually changed the racial composition of the regular
army, which increasingly came to resemble the creole slave population. So
did provisions that permitted drafted militiamen to replace themselves with
slaves in 1823 and 1824 and again during the Cisplatine War (18261828).
Such substitutes were freed by their owners prior to enlistment; their numbers
were not large, and the corporation only reluctantly accepted them. Ofcers
held that the inux of these recruits ruined the army, and after the war, commanders in Rio Grande do Sul removed the remaining slave substitutes from
combat units to the transport corps.

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All of these developments changed the meaning of military service, and for
some slaves, running away to the army became a strategy to escape bondage.
To forestall this response, the Brazilian government ordered in 1824 that all
men of color prove their free status before enlistment, but until the end of
slavery in 1888, hundreds of runaways were discovered in the army. Most of
the cases that I located for the 1820s were the consequence of the war for
independence, but after the denitive lifting of the color bar to recruitment for
the regulars in 1837, the ow of fugitives increased substantially. Some were
inadvertently impressed by recruiters who could not (or would not) distinguish between free and slave, but others were clearly fugitives seeking to use
the army as a vehicle to escape their owners.
The armys policy toward these men was in principle straightforward and in
practice utterly byzantine. Slaves were ineligible to serve, so the men had to be
returned to their rightful owners, in wartime and in peacetime; the army never
deliberately or knowingly conscated slaves. Discharges, however, required
proof of both ownership and the identity of the man in question so as to
prevent false claims of slave status (on the part of either would-be owners or
unwilling soldiers) and the enslavement of free men in cases of mistaken identity. Moreover, as had been recognized after the War of Divine Liberty and the
struggle for independence, slaves who performed services for the state as soldiers should not be returned to slavery. This principle was quietly extended to
runaway slaves who distinguished themselves in the ranks as early as 1824,
and it became standard practice in the Brazilian army by the 1840s. In these
cases, the slaves were evaluated and the owners compensated. Of course, this
rule was not widely advertised, for that would have been an open invitation
for slaves to run away to the army. A nal irony derived from the armys
scal concerns. Although the corporation compensated the owners of the
slaves that it kept as soldiers, it also demanded reimbursement for their upkeep from masters who received their property back, likely because the men
were imprisoned from the moment that they were discovered (to prevent them
from deserting). One case dragged on for six years, and the owner found
herself owing more to the army than she would receive as compensation for
freeing him!
The 277 cases of slaves reclaimed from the army include virtually every
possible permutation. Some of the slaves preferred to return home and confessed their slave status at once (but a few of these confessions were spurious
because they came from free men seeking to escape military service). Others
were deliberately seeking to escape slavery, including one volunteer who insisted so vehemently on being assigned to an undesireable remote garrison that
ofcers became suspicious of his motives. A few highly complex cases involved

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men whose status was unclear, some of whom had enlisted as an afrmation of
their free status. Virtually all of the slaves involved were creoles; Africans, as
aliens, could not serve in the Brazilian army.
The armys treatment of runaway slaves is consistent with Brazilian policy
toward arming slaves in the rst half of the nineteenth century. Slaves could
not be soldiers, and after Labatuts efforts, none were knowingly enlisted in
the Brazilian armed forces. The recognition of the Lancers freedom in the
peace treaty with the Farroupilha rebels was an unusual circumstance forced
by the empires inability to win a decisive victory. In 1823 and 1845, compensation to masters who manumitted the slaves who had served maintained the
legal ction of property rights. Runaways who were freed because of distinguished service in peacetime had to be freed by their owners (for only they
were authorized to manumit slaves), and compensation had to be paid to
ensure that the masters property rights were fully respected. If slaves were to
serve in the military, then they had to be freed by their owners (which, of
course, meant that they were not slaves but freedmen on enlistment). If slaves
served in the armed forces and distinguished themselves, then the state had an
obligation to arrange for manumission and compensation to the owner. These
principles also governed the last and greatest episode of slave recruitment in
Brazilian history, that of the Paraguayan War.

The Paraguayan War Slave Recruitment, 18641870

The war that broke out with Paraguay over Brazilian intervention in
Uruguayan affairs was Brazils longest and bloodiest foreign conict. After an
initial wave of patriotic fervor, the conict became increasingly unpopular,
particularly because it turned into a lengthy siege of Paraguayan fortications
by Brazilian forces, aided by Argentine and Uruguayan troops. This was a
costly war, with Brazil mobilizing more than one hundred thousand men.
Technically speaking, no slaves were knowingly recruited for the war, and all
of the slave-soldiers (with the exception of fugitives) were actually men freed
on the condition of serving in the army or the navy. This was true both in the
rst two years of the war, when the only slaves who entered the army were
privately freed by their masters, and in 1867 and 1868, when the Brazilian
government paid compensation to encourage owners to free slaves for military
service. The Paraguayan War slave recruitment was a highly successful policy, raising a signicant number of soldiers and avoiding the improvisations
that had characterized earlier episodes of slave recruitment.
During the rst two years of the war, slaves entered the armed forces in a
number of different ways, in all cases preceded by manumission. Some were,

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Hendrik Kraay

in effect, donated by private owners, freed on condition of serving in the army

or the navy. The army recorded a total of 799 such donations for the war, with
630 of them coming from the city of Rio de Janeiro. Impressed men (or designated National Guardsmen) could under certain circumstances present substitutes, and nothing prevented slaveowners from freeing a slave to serve in
their place or in the place of a son. A total of 948 substitutions are recorded,
with the majority concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. The
limited number of such substitutions derives from both the poverty of most
impressed men and the fact that most classes of recruits could avoid service by
paying 600 mil-ris (about US$262), roughly half the value of an adult male
slave at that time.
In late 1866 the Brazilian government took several steps to increase the
number of slave recruits. The Council of State debated the issue extensively,
resolving to free and draft government-owned slaves (Emperor Pedro II insisted that these mens wives also be freed) and to encourage masters to free
slaves by offering compensation. Opponents of the measure considered it
impolitic and indecorous, feared that it would lead to slave unrest, and suspected that masters would take advantage of the government to rid themselves
of troublesome slaves. Speaking for the majority, Councillor Jos Toms Nabuco de Arajo anticipated that any measure that turned slaves into free men
would be applauded by civilized nations. The central issue in the councils
discussion was the extent of masters property rights and, at the same time that
Nabuco (incorrectly) argued that the 1823 decree freeing slaves who had
fought in the war for independence constituted a precedent for obliging owners to free slaves to ght, he and his colleagues shied away from such a
drastic step, instead carefully restricting the government to freeing its own
slaves and offering compensation to masters who would free their slaves. As
he explained, there was no danger . . . in the purchase of slaves to be freed and
serve in the army, for the slaves will not themselves be called up; rather the
masters will be invited to sell [them] if [the masters] so desire; . . . [their rights]
will not be violated. The Brazilian state carefully respected property rights.
By this time, the end of slavery was inevitable, given the closing of the slave
trade in the early 1850s and the inability of the Brazilian slave population to
reproduce itself. But Brazilians were deeply divided regarding abolition and
whether the state should have a role in regulating it. The compensated emancipations that began in early 1867 prompted fears among slaveowners that the
government would go further, particularly given Pedro IIs strong support for
both slave recruitment and abolition. The worries subsided by the middle of
the year, and compensated emancipation gradually came to be seen as a suit-

Arming Slaves in Brazil

169

able way of ending slavery. Rio de Janeiros Semana Ilustrada carried a number of cartoons that expressed this view, one showing a thankful slave receiving freedom and a rie from his master. Grateful and disciplined former slaves
who would serve their country and their benevolent superiors were, in fact,
desired by many an abolitionist, and a stint in the army, as Nabuco had noted
when considering slave recruitment, might be just what was needed to discipline newly freed men.
From early 1867 through 1868, the Brazilian government made compensated emancipation a priority, nominally paying a rising price and a premium
of as much as 75 percent over average prices recorded in probate inventories.
Much of the premium, however, reected the discounted value of the bonds
that slaveholders received. The number of slaves recruited for this conict
remains the subject of debate, but the combined ofcial gure for the army and
the navy of 6,905 is likely quite accurate, given the legal and scal concerns of
authorities. For slaves, the compensation program offered new opportunities. Some requested that masters sell them to the government. Toms de
Aquino, facing a sentence of two hundred lashes for assault, petitioned to be
sent to the army instead, noting that he had long had a vocation for brawling (his services were declined). A more subtle and determined Quinto forced
his masters hand by repeatedly running away and attempting to enlist, only to
be turned away by local authorities who recognized that he was a slave; when
he nally prevailed on a recruiting agent to enlist him, his master gave up and
requested compensation.
The legacy of wartime slave recruitment is and was widely debated. For
some, it contributed to abolitionist sentiment in the armed forces and destabilized slavery when the freed veterans returned home after the war. But the
majority of the men freed for the war did not return home in 1869 and 1870,
for they had been enlisted in the army and navy for nine-year terms, and at
least one who was inadvertently discharged was later arrested and returned to
the army. Among the returning veterans was a small but signicant number
of runaway slaves who had served as free men but whose slave status had not
been liquidated. That owners sought to regain these men has been presented as
evidence of a duplicitous master class that freed slaves to ght only to reduce
them to slavery later. The imperial government, however, sought to put an
end to such kidnapping of ex-soldiers by ruling that they had to be treated as
free men, in other words, that they had to be presumed free and could not be
imprisoned on suspicion of being fugitives. At the same time, it invited owners
to submit claims for compensation so that the men could be legally freed
without violating property rights.

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Hendrik Kraay

The Paraguayan War was the only time that the Brazilian state, at its highest
levels, deliberately resolved to enlist slaves in its armed forces. During this
carefully planned recruitment, the empire avoided what its statesmen and
slaveholders perceived as the excesses of slave recruitment, such as those carried out by republican rebels earlier in the century, and the problem of postenlistment manumissions after the war of independence and the Farroupilha
Rebellion. It carefully respected masters property rights, requiring that the
slaves be freed rst, and managed to secure a signicant inux of freed manpower for the war effort. It could be seen as a model of master-controlled
emancipation. During the debate about the 1871 free womb law, Perdigo
Malheiro, the jurist of slavery, held up masters willingness to manumit slaves
for the war effort as evidence of their support for emancipation, arguing that
the freeing of children to be born of slave mothers threatened property rights
and the moral force of absolute power on which masters authority rested.
Of course, paying for the emancipation of 1.5 million slaves was entirely
beyond Brazils means, and the emancipation fund set up under the terms of the
1871 law freed only small numbers of slaves. Indeed, it is striking how little
direct impact wartime slave recruitment had on slavery. The numbers involved
were, of course, insignicant in relation to the total slave population, and any
hints of large-scale expropriations prompted vigorous opposition from slaveowners. Compared to the nearly contemporaneous civil war in the United
States and the struggle for independence in Cuba, abolition in Brazil was not a
war aim in the way that it was for the Union or for at least some of the Cuban
patriots.
Over the course of three centuries, the arming of slaves was common in Brazil
as in other parts of the Americas. That many, if not most, of the weapons in
slaves hands were wielded in defense of slaveowners interests testies to the
strength, durability, and exibility of slavery. As so much recent scholarship
has stressed, slavery cannot be reduced to a simple model of repressive owners
and resistant slaves but rather was characterized by much more complex negotiated social relationships. The motives of armed slaves are, unfortunately,
difcult to discern. Those who took up arms in their masters private interests
or were required to do somay have welcomed the change from their daily
routine or may have hoped that such service would later be rewarded in some
way. The numerous worries that private arming would lead to slave rebellion
(or at least make revolts more dangerous) are readily comprehensible. But
these concerns appear to have been exaggerated; after all, masters were highly
selective in arming slaves. Not every slave became a bodyguard, hunter, or hit
man; only a few did, no doubt enjoying numerous privileges as a result. They

Arming Slaves in Brazil

171

thus became part of the complex social hierarchy of slavery and gained an
interest in preserving it, or at least their place in it.
Where it was a possibility (however remote), freedom no doubt inspired
many slaves to risk their lives in armed forces, as suggested by the runaways
who joined the army and the navy during Brazils wars (or in peacetime). They
too, no doubt, sought a change in routine, often also anticipating that they
could distance themselves from masters by joining the military. Evidently slaves
knew of the difference between private and public arming, to judge by the
excitement that Labatuts enlistments caused. Others, however, were herded
into the military with little choice in the matter, but in this respect, they scarcely
differed from the rest of the impressed rank and le, particularly during the
Paraguayan War. Ultimately, granting of freedom in exchange for military
service was a problematic matter. Not only did it usually imply risking ones life
in wartime, but it also typically implied that the freedman would remain under
the control of a military corporation, which many of the free-born would have
considered a far cry from true liberty. Keeping ex-slaves under military discipline, however, suited masters who were deeply concerned about uncontrolled
liberty and the effect of such freedmen on those still enslaved.
Most impressive is the extreme caution with which the Brazilian state proceeded when it came to interfering in the private or domestic sphere of slavemaster relations. Most owners saw state regulation of slave activities, the
summary punishment of slave weapons offenders by police, and of course, the
liberation of slaves who had served or were to serve in armed forces as unwelcome encroachments on their prerogatives. Discipline and control over
manumission ought, ideally, to remain in masters hands. To be sure, these
principles could never be upheld absolutely, especially in the nineteenth century, but when compared to the other cases of public arming of slaves discussed in this book, the Brazilian case stands out, particularly in the separation
of slave arming from nal abolition. None of Brazils early nineteenth-century
republican rebels approached the abolitionist fervor of French revolutionary
administrators such as Victor Hugues in Guadalupe during the mid1790s.
Slavery was fatally weakened by slave recruitment during the wars for independence in Spanish America; the closest counterpart in BrazilLabatuts
slave recruitment in Bahiamay have shaken the planter class and the slave
regime, but both recovered, and slavery expanded there for several more decades. The Paraguayan War slave recruitment was carefully regulated, and
discussions of how to manage abolition were postponed until after the war,
when masters and authorities could deal with it from a stronger position. In
this sense, an analysis of armed slaves underscores the strength and durability
of the Brazilian slave regime.

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Hendrik Kraay
Notes

I gratefully acknowledge nancial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. Numerous colleagues have aided this research by sharing
sources and discussing issues with me; I thank especially Alexandra Brown, Clia Levy,
Joo Jos Reis, Hal Langfur, Maria Medianeira Padoin, Richard Graham, Roderick
Barman, Roger Kittleson, Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Stuart B. Schwartz, Vitor Izecksohn, and Walter Fraga Filho. Jewel Spangler, Philip Morgan, and Christopher Brown
provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AAPEBa (Anais do Arquivo Pblico do Estado da Bahia);
ABNRJ (Anais da Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro); AHEx/RQ (Arquivo Histrico do Exrcito, Requerimentos); AHRGS (Arquivo Histrico do Rio Grande do Sul);
AIHGB (Arquivo do Instituto Histrico e Geogrco Brasileiro); ANRJ (Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro), SPE (Seo do Poder Executivo), AP (Arquivos Particulares); APA
(Arquivo Pblico de Alagoas); APEBa/SACP (Arquivo Pblico do Estado da Bahia, Seo
de Arquivo Colonial e Provincial); BNRJ/SM (Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Seo
de Manuscritos); CLB (Coleo das Leis do Brasil ); PAEBa (Publicaes do Archivo do
Estado da Bahia); RIGHBa (Revista do Instituto Geogrco e Histrico da Bahia);
RIHGB (Revista do Instituto Histrico e Geogrco Brasileiro); Rio (city of Rio de
Janeiro).
1. [Antonio

Marques] Perdigo Malheiro, A escravido no Brasil: Ensaio histrico,

jurdico, social, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Petrpolis, Brazil, 1976), 1:35 (italics in original).
2. Ibid., 1:51 (italics in original).
3. Ibid., 1:96.
4. Many scholars have stressed the limits of state power in slave societies and the
unwillingness or inability of the state to intervene in slave-master relations. See, among
others, Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society:
Bahia, 15501835 (Cambridge, UK, 1985), 26062; Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos, O tempo
saquarema (So Paulo, 1987), 10929.
5. Malheiro, Escravido, 1:94; Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Silences of the Law:
Customary Law and Positive Law on the Manumission of Slaves in 19th-Century Brazil,
History and Anthropology 1:2 (1985): 42743.
6. Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, UK, 1999), 211.
7. Standard English-language works on Brazilian slavery include Schwartz, Sugar
Plantations; Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 18081850 (Princeton,
1987); Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras, a Brazilian Coffee County: The Roles of Planter and
Slave in a Plantation Society (Princeton, 1985); Joo Jos Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil:
The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia, trans. Arthur Brakel (Baltimore, 1993); Kathleen
J. Higgins, Licentious Liberty in a Brazilian Gold Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and
Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabar, Minas Gerais (University Park, PA, 1999).
8. Richard Graham, Free African Brazilians and the State in Slavery Times, in
Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil, ed. Michael Hanchard (Durham, 1999), 31.
9. See, e.g., Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the
Colonial Americas (New York, 1993); Karasch, Slave Life, 7981. Part of the problem

Arming Slaves in Brazil

173

derives from the multiple meanings of the contemporary Brazilian racial terms preto
(black, slave, or African) and negro (black or slave).
10. Urban policing has been the subject of several major studies. See Leila Mezan
Algranti, O feitor ausente: Estudos sobre a escravido urbana no Rio de Janeiro, 1808
1822 (Petrpolis, Brazil, 1988); Thomas H. Holloway, Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a Nineteenth-Century City (Stanford, 1993); Alexandra Kelly
Brown, On the Vanguard of Civilization: Slavery, the Police, and Conicts Between
Public and Private Power in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, 18351888 (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1998). See also the critique in Carlos Eugnio Lbano Soares, A
capoeira escrava e outras tradies rebeldes no Rio de Janeiro, 18081850 (Campinas,
Brazil, 2001), 500502.
11. Decree, July 8, 1521, Law, January 24, 1756, and Decree, January 9, 1732, in
Children of Gods Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil, ed. Robert Edgar
Conrad (Princeton, 1983), 246, 249, 250; Articles 297 and 299, Law, December 16,
1830 (Codigo Criminal do Imperio do Brazil), CLB; Articles 6869, Codigo de posturas
da camara municipal de Pirassununga (So Paulo, 1880), 9. See also A. J. R. RussellWood, Ambivalent Authorities: The African and Afro-Brazilian Contribution to Local
Governance in Colonial Brazil, The Americas 57:1 (July 2000): 2425.
12. Ordinance, So Paulo, February 8, 1738, in Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, Lutas de
famlias no Brasil (introduo ao seu estudo), 2nd ed. (So Paulo, 1980), 109, n. 36;
Decree, January 9, 1732, and Law, January 24, 1756, in Children, ed. Conrad, 249, 250;
Holloway, Policing, 42, 47, 49; Repertrio de fontes sobre a escravido existentes no
Arquivo Municipal de Salvador: As posturas, 16311889 (Salvador, Brazil, 1988), 48.
See also Silvia Hunold Lara, Campos da violncia: Escravos e senhores na capitania do
Rio de Janeiro, 17501808 (Rio, 1988), 80.
13. Henry Koster, Travels in Brazil in the Years from 1809 to 1815, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1817), 1:287. See Johann Moritz Rugendas, Viagem pitoresca atravs do Brasil,
trans. Srgio Milliet (So Paulo, n.d.), plates 4/5, 4/15, 4/16, 4/18.
14. Leila Mezan Algranti, Slave Crimes: The Use of Police Power to Control the Slave
Population of Rio de Janeiro, Luso-Brazilian Review 25:1 (Summer 1988): 35; Karasch,
Slave Life, 330; Holloway, Policing, 78, 136, 197; Soares, Capoeira, 104, 111, 188, 345,
44445, 457, 481.
15. Lara, Campos, 29192; Soares, Capoeira, 108; Francisco Peixoto de Lacerda
Werneck, Memria sobre a fundao de uma fazenda na provncia do Rio de Janeiro
(Rio, 1985), 65.
16. Quoted in Julio Pinto Vallejos, Slave Control and Slave Resistance in Colonial
Minas Gerais, 17001750, Journal of Latin American Studies 17:1 (May 1985): 15.
17. Soares, Capoeira, 43941.
18. Russell-Wood, Ambivalent Authorities, 25.
19. Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 38, 19095; Vallejos, Slave Control, 57, 11
13, 16, 33; Hal Lawrence Langfur, The Forbidden Lands: Frontier, Settlers, Slaves, and
Indians in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 17601830 (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin,
1999), 25758; Charles R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 16951750 (Berkeley,
1962), 51, 62, 63, 79, 19495; Donald Ramos, O quilombo e o sistema escravista em

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Hendrik Kraay

Minas Gerais do sculo XVIII, in Liberdade por um o: Histria dos quilombolas no

Brasil, ed. Joo Jos Reis and Flvio dos Santos Gomes (So Paulo, 1996), 18586.
20. Matheus van den Broeck, Journael, ofte historiaelse beschrijuinge . . . (Amsterdam, 1651), plate 2.
21. Rugendas, Viagem, 191; Joo Calmon du Pin e Almeida to President of Bahia,
Engenho Cavalcanti, November 20, 1868, APEBa/SACP, mao [bundle] 3491; Koster,
Travels, 1:322; Lara, Campos, 169, 19399.
22. Solimar Oliveira Lima, Triste pampa: Resistncia e punio de escravos em fontes
judiciais no Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1997), 70, 72; Nancy Priscilla Naro,
Fact, Fantasy, or Folklore? A Novel Case of Retribution in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,
Luso-Brazilian Review 33:1 (Summer 1996): 5980; Pinto, Lutas, 1078; Lara, Campos, 11920, 200.
23. Jean-Baptiste Debret, Viagem pitoresca e histrica ao Brasil, 3 vols. in 2, trans.
Srgio Milliet (So Paulo, 1972), 1:174; see also the plate between pages 164 and 165.
24. Lara, Campos, 182; Denise Aparecida Soares Moura, Saindo das sombras: Homens livres e pobres vivendo a crise do trabalho escravo, 18501888 (Campinas, Brazil,
1998), 25152; Jos Antonio

Soares de Sousa, O efmero quilombo do Pati do Alferes,

em 1838, RIHGB 295 (AprilJune 1972), 36.
25. Ruling of Interim Council, Cachoeira, November 28, 1822, in Children, ed. Conrad, 255; Baron of Maragogipe to President of Bahia, Pimentel, December 1, 1827,
APEBa/SACP, m. 3458. On the revolts of the early nineteenth century, see Reis, Slave
Rebellion, 4053.
26. Acting Governors to King, Salvador, January 14, 1764, and President of Maranho, Relatrio (1853), 78, in Children, ed. Conrad, 380, 387; Legion Chief to President of Rio de Janeiro, Valena, November 8, 1838, in Sousa, Efmero quilombo, 43;
Minister of Justice to President of Alagoas, Rio, August 14, 1832, APA, L-133, E-20.
27. On quilombos, see the articles in Reis and Gomes, Liberdade.
28. Stuart B. Schwartz, Cantos e quilombos numa conspirao de escravos Hausss:
Bahia, 1814, in Liberdade, ed. Reis and Gomes, 381, 386; Sousa, Efmero quilombo,
50; Reis, Slave Rebellion, 90.
29. Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 196.
30. Dierick Ruiters, cited in Outras vises do Rio de Janeiro colonial: Antologia de
textos, 15821808, ed. Jean Marcel Carvalho Frana (Rio, 2000), 40.
31. Jonas Finck, in Vises do Rio de Janeiro colonial: Antologia de textos, 1531
1800, ed. Jean Marcel Carvalho Frana (Rio, 1999), 70; Ren Duguay-Trouin, Guillaume Franois de Parscau, Chancel de Lagrange, and Joseph Collet, cited in Outras
vises, 69, 121, 144, 171.
32. Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Olinda restaurada (Rio, 1975), 166, 177; Charles R.
Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 16241654 (Oxford, 1957), 64.
33. Proclamation, May 15, 1645, in Francisco Augusto Pereira da Costa, Anais pernambucanas, 11 vols., 2nd ed. (Recife, Brazil, 198385), 3:202.
34. E. C. Mello, Olinda, 177; Costa, Anais, 3:25556; Boxer, Dutch, 169; Jos Antonio

Gonsalves de Mello, Henrique Dias, governador dos crioulos, negros e mulatos do

Brasil (Recife, Brazil, 1988), 35; A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Black Man in Slavery and
Freedom in Colonial Brazil (London, 1982), 74.

Arming Slaves in Brazil

175

35. E. C. Mello, Olinda, 172, 176; Pedro Puntoni, A msera sorte: A escravido africana no Brasil holands e as guerras do trco no Atlntico Sul, 16211648 (So Paulo,
1999), 143.
36. Costa, Anais, 3:362; E. C. Mello, Olinda, 266; J. A. G. Mello, Henrique Dias, 50
52.
37. Koster, Travels, 2:184; Rugendas, Viagem, 127, 249; Louis F. Tollenare, Notes
dominicales prises pendant un voyage en Portugal et au Brsil en 1816, 1817 et 1818, ed.
Lon Bourdon, 3 vols. (Paris, 1971), 2:451, 484.
38. On imperial Brazilian recruitment legislation and practice, see Hendrik Kraay,
Race, State and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s1840s (Stanford, 2001), 185200.
39. Russell-Wood, Black Man, 8493; Hendrik Kraay, The Politics of Race in
Independence-Era Bahia: The Black Militia Ofcers of Salvador, 17901840, in AfroBrazilian Culture and Politics: Bahia, 1790s1990s, ed. Kraay (Armonk, 1998), 3056;
Kraay, Race, 82105, 21832.
40. Acting Governors to Count of Oeiras, Salvador, April 10, 1762, ABNRJ 31
(1909), 491; Count of Cunha to Oeiras, Rio, June 30, 1765, RIHGB 254 (January
March 1962), 319.
41. Marquis of Lavradio to Dom Antonio

de Noronha, Rio, June 20, 1775, and

November 4, 1775, in Marqus de Lavradio, Cartas do Rio de Janeiro, 17691776 (Rio,
1978), 161, 163; Langfur, Forbidden Lands, 138.
42. Marquis of Pombal to Manoel da Cunha Menezes, Ajuda, August 3, 1776, BNRJ/
SM, I-31, 30, 17, fol. 1v; Advisory to Proprietors, Salvador, October 9, 1776 (copy),
ANRJ/SPE, IG1, m. 112, fol. 121v; Menezes to Pombal, Salvador, November 1, 1776,
ABNRJ 32 (1910), 334.
43. Lavradio to Noronha, Rio, June 20, 1775, in Lavradio, Cartas, 161; Pombal to
Menezes, Ajuda, August 3, 1776, BNRJ/SM, I-31, 30, 17, fols. 3v4r; Dauril Alden,
Royal Government in Colonial Brazil, with Special Reference to the Administration of
the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy, 17691779 (Berkeley, 1968), 215.
44. Vallejos, Slave Control, 16; Langfur, Forbidden Lands, 141.
45. Count of Linhares to Interim Government, Rio, February 28, 1810, APEBa/SACP,
m. 110, doc. 60; Joo Baptista Vieira Godinho to Linhares, May 8, 1810, ANRJ/SPE/
IG1, m. 112, fols. 116r19r. See also Russell-Wood, Black Man, 87; Russell-Wood,
Ambivalent Authorities, 33.
46. The best English-language overview of Brazilian independence is Roderick J. Barman, Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 17981852 (Stanford, 1988).
47. Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories, rev. ed.
(Chapel Hill, 2000), 12628.
48. Glacyra Lazzari Leite, Pernambuco, 1817: Estrutura e comportamentos sociais
(Recife, Brazil, 1988).
49. Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Revisitando uma quartelada: Os aparelhos repressivos e a questo social em 1817, Debates de Histria Regional 1 (1992): 73, 77; Amaro
Quintas, A revoluo de 1817 (Rio, 1985), 118; Carlos Guilherme Mota, Nordeste 1817:
Estruturas e argumentos (So Paulo, 1972), 99.
50. Proclamation, March 15, 1817, in Costa, Anais, 7:392; Tollenare, Notes, 2:568.

176

Hendrik Kraay

On this question more broadly, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age
of Revolution (Ithaca, 1975), esp. chap. 6.
51. Costa, Anais, 7:402; Tollenare, Notes, 2:260; Carvalho, Revisitando, 7374.
52. Tollenare, Notes, 3:647; Costa, Anais, 7:423.
53. Paulo Cesar Souza, A Sabinada: A revolta separatista da Bahia, 1837 (So Paulo,
1987); Hendrik Kraay, As Terrifying as Unexpected: The Bahian Sabinada, 1837
1838, Hispanic American Historical Review 72:4 (November 1992): 50127.
54. Proclamation of Joo Carneiro da Silva Rego, November 14, 1837, Jornal do
Commercio (Rio), November 27, 1837, p. 1; Vice-President of Bahia to Minister of
Justice, Cachoeira, November 16, 1837, ANRJ/SPE, IJJ9, m. 605.
55. Daniel Gomes de Freitas, Narrativa dos successos da Sabinada, PAEBa 1 (1937):
26768, 27677, 281; Ordem do Dia 10, Diario da Bahia, January 12, 1838, p. 2.
56. Proclamation of Carneiro, January 3, 1838, PAEBa 2 (1938): 8384.
57. Decree, February 19, 1838, BNRJ/SM, I-31, 12, 1, fols. 404v5r; Freitas, Narrativa, 300. On anti-African sentiment, see Reis, Slave Rebellion, 2034.
58. President of Bahia to Chief of Police, Salvador, March 31, and April 3 and 19,
1838, PAEBa 5 (1948): 266, 269, 281.
59. Relao dos escravos fugidos . . . , 1850, AHRGS, lata [b0x] 531, m. 1.
60. Spencer L. Leitman, Razes scio-econmicas da Guerra dos Farrapos: Um captulo da histria do Brasil no sculo XIX (Rio, 1979); Maria Medianeira Padoin, Federalismo gacho: Fronteira platina, direito e revoluo (So Paulo, 2001).
61. Several scholars have analyzed the Farroupilhas policy toward slaves, though
none provide a fully satisfactory account: Spencer L. Leitman, The Black Ragamufns:
Racial Hypocrisy in Nineteenth-Century Southern Brazil, The Americas 33:3 (January
1977): 50418; Mrio Maestri, O escravo gacho: Resistncia e trabalho (Porto Alegre,
Brazil, 1993), 7682; Helga I. L. Picolo, A questo da escravido na Revoluo Farroupilha, Anais da V Reunio da SBPH (1986): 22530; Claudio Moreira Bento, O
negro e descendentes na sociedade do Rio Grande do Sul, 16351975 (Porto Alegre,
Brazil, 1976), 14873; Margaret Marchiori Bakos, A escravido negra e os Farroupilhas, in Revoluo Farroupilha: Histria e historiograa, ed. Dcio Freitas (Porto
Alegre, Brazil, 1985), 7997; Wilson Sander et al., A presena do negro e do ndio no
decnio farroupilha, Estudos Ibero-Americanos 9:12 (JulyDecember 1983): 21121.
62. Colonel Jacinto Guedes da Luz to Citizen General Antonio

[de Souza] Netto and

to Citizen Captain Jos do Amaral Ferrador, Paipasso, November 2, 1840, AIHGB, D.L.
845.36.
63. Acting Minister of War to Souza Netto, Piratini, February 13, 1841, AIHGB, D.L.
845.37; Ordem do Dia 37, So Gabriel, February 27, 1841, AIHGB, D.L. 127.19.
64. These decrees are analyzed by Bento, Negro, 15759.
65. See the analysis of government policy by a well-connected conservative journalist,
Justiniano Jos da Rocha, Os soldados dos republicanos do Rio Grande, O Brasil
(Rio), June 5, 1841.
66. Baron of Caxias to Minister of War, Bag, March 5, 1845, in Ofcios do Baro de
Caxias, 18421843 . . . (Rio, 1950), 170; Resoluo, July 19, 1845, in Consultas do
Conselho de Estado relativamente a negocios do Ministrio da Guerra desde o anno de
1843 a 1866 . . . , ed. Candido Pereira Monteiro (Rio, 1872), 24; Decree 427, July 26,

Arming Slaves in Brazil

177

1845, CLB; Instruces para a commisso encarregada de avaliar os individuos que

havendo sido escravos, se acho livres em consequencia dos acontecimentos da Provincia
de So Pedro, cited in Karasch, Slave Life, 338, n. 8; Article 6, Paragraph 26, Law 514,
October 28, 1848, CLB.
67. Relao dos escravos fugidos . . . , 1850, AHRGS, Lata 531, m. 1. Contradictory
and undocumented assertions about the Farroupilha freedmens fate pervade the literature. Compare Bento, Negro, 20; Piccolo, Questo, 230; Leitman, Black Ragamufns, 518.
68. Souza, Sabinada, 14546.
69. Decrees, May 10, 1817 and November 12, 1822, CLB.
70. Decisions 57, 244, and 25, March 5 and October 22, 1825, and February 11,
1826, and Decree, July 14, 1828, CLB.
71. On independence in Bahia, see Kraay, Race, chap. 5. The slave recruitment in
this war is treated confusingly in the literature. F. W. O. Morton denies that it took place
at all in The Conservative Revolution of Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics in
Bahia (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1974), 26768. Others note that it took place but
do not investigate it fully: Braz do Amaral, Histria da Independncia na Bahia, 2nd ed.
(Salvador, 1957), 7, 272, 285, 29192; Aydano do Couto Ferraz, O escravo negro na
revoluo da independncia da Baa, in Revista do Arquivo Municipal (So Paulo) 56
(1939): 195202; Joo Jos Reis and Eduardo Silva, Negociao e conito: A resistncia
negra no Brasil escravista (So Paulo, 1989), 90, 9698; Ubiratan Castro de Arajo,
Sans gloire: Le soldat noire sous le drapeau brsilien, 17981838, in Pour lhistoire du
Brsil: Mlanges offerts Ktia de Queirs Mattoso, ed. Franois Crouzet et al. (Paris,
2000), 52740. I have examined this episode more fully in my Em outra coisa no
falavam os pardos, cabras e crioulos: O recrutamento de escravos na guerra da independncia na Bahia, 18221823, Revista Brasileira de Histria 22:43 (2002): 10926.
72. Interim Council to Pierre Labatut, Cachoeira, November 22, 1822, AAPEBa 41
(1973), 28, and to Minister of Empire, Cachoeira, December 23, 1822, RIGHBa 14
(1897), 561, 563.
73. Interim Council to Labatut, Cachoeira, April 12 and 14, 1823, AAPEBa 41
(1973), 88, 89; Labatut to Interim Council, Cangurung, April 16, 1823, in Silva, Memorias, 4:2, n. 2; Termo de Veriao, Jaguaripe, April 23, 1823, AAPEBa 10 (1923), 63
65; Interim Council to Minister of Empire, Cachoeira, April 16, 1823, RIGHBa 17
(1898), 36264.
74. On Labatuts background, see Affonso Ruy, Dossier do Marechal Pedro Labatut
(Rio, 1960), chap. 3. Bolivars slave recruitment is analyzed by Nuria Sales de Bohigas,
Esclavos y reclutas en sudamrica, 18161826, in Sobre esclavos, reclutas y mercaderes de quintos (Barcelona, 1974), 85102.
75. Joaquim Pires de Carvalho e Albuquerque to Major Commanding, Fixed Artillery,
Rio, March 16, 1825, AHEx/RQ, JJ-237-5790.
76. Jos Joaquim de Lima e Silva to Minister of Empire, July 16, 1823, BNRJ/SM,
II-31, 35, 4; Decision 113, July 30, 1823, CLB.
77. Maria Ins Cortes de Oliveira, Viver e morrer no meio dos seus: Naes e comunidades africanas na Bahia do sculo XIX, Revista USP 28 (December 1995February
1996): 191.

178

Hendrik Kraay

78. See, e.g., Lieutenant-Colonel Commander, Fourteenth Battalion, to Governor of

Arms, Salvador, March 23, 1827, APEBa/SACP, m. 3367.
79. Antonio de Souza Lima to Governor of Arms, Itaparica, July 30, 1825 (copy),
APEBa, m. 3365.
80. Artillery Commander to President of Bahia, Salvador, May 9, 1825, BNRJ/SM,
II-33, 31, 4, no. 5, doc. 19; Commander, Fourteenth Infantry, to Governor of Arms,
Salvador, March 23, 1827, APEBa, m. 3367.
81. Silva, Memorias, 4:59, n. 28.
82. Ibid., 4:179. On the mutiny, see Lus Henrique Dias Tavares, O levante dos Periquitos (Salvador, 1990); Kraay, Race, 11011; 12425; 13233; 13839.
83. Few African freedmen found their way into the corporation.
84. Francisco de Paula Cidade, O soldado de 1827 (ninharias de histria, relativos
aos soldados da Guerra Cisplatina), Revista Militar Brasileira 17:1 (JanuaryMarch
1927): 47; Maria Stella de Novaes, A escravido e abolio no Esprito Santo: Histria e
folclore (Vitria, 1963), 57; Relao nominal dos Pretos, e Pardos que por occazio da
Guerra foro offerecidos para assentarem prasa em lugar dos seus senhores, So Francisco de Paula, October 23, 1830, ANRJ/AP 31 (Gustavo Henrique Brown), doc. 213.
85. The following discussion is entirely based on my The Shelter of the Uniform:
The Brazilian Army and Runaway Slaves, 18001888, Journal of Social History 29:3
(Spring 1996): 63757. lvaro Pereira do Nascimentos study of fugitives in the imperial
navy reveals similar patterns, Do cativeiro ao mar: Escravos na Marinha de Guerra,
Estudos Afro-Asiticos 38 (December 2000), www.scielo.br (March 13, 2002).
86. The standard English-language work on the war, Charles J. Kolinskis Independence or Death: The Story of the Paraguayan War (Gainesville, 1965), is now partially
superseded by Thomas L. Whighams The Paraguayan War: A History, vol. 1, Causes and
Early Conduct (Lincoln, 2002).
87. I examine this episode more fully in my Slavery, Citizenship and Military Service
in Brazils Mobilization for the Paraguayan War, Slavery and Abolition 18:3 (December
1997): 22856. For different interpretations, see Jorge Prata de Sousa, Escravido ou
morte: Os escravos brasileiros na Guerra do Paraguai (Rio, 1996); Ricardo Salles,
Guerra do Paraguai: Escravido e cidadania na formao do exrcito (Rio, 1990); Andr
Amaral de Toral, A participao dos negros escravos na Guerra do Paraguai, Estudos
Avanados 24 (MayAugust 1995): 28796.
88. Kraay, Slavery, 23234.
89. In this respect, he repeated an error of Perdigo Malheiro, Escravido, 1:100.
90. Minutes of Council of State, November 5, 1866, Brazil, Senado Federal, Atas do
Conselho de Estado: Obra comemorativa do sesquicentenrio da instituio parlamentar
(Braslia, 1973), 6:7190.
91. Kraay, Slavery, 23637.
92. Semana Illustrada (Rio), November 11, 1866, 2469; Minutes of Council of State,
November 5, 1866, Brazil, Senado Federal, Atas, 6:83.
93. Kraay, Slavery, 23944.
94. I present the evidence for the accuracy of the ofcial total in Slavery, 23946;
others, however, suspect undercounting. See Sousa, Escravidao, 8290; Salles, Guerra,
6376.

Arming Slaves in Brazil

179

95. Petition of Thomaz de Aquino to President of Bahia, c. 1867, APEBa/SACP, m.

3671; President of Rio Grande do Sul to Chief of Police, Porto Alegre, April 8, 1867,
AHRGS, Correspondncia dos Governantes, m. 109.
96. Robert B. Toplin, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (New York, 1972), 219; Paulo
Mercadante, Militares e civis: A tica e o compromisso (Rio, 1978), 107; Nelson Werneck
Sodr, Histria militar do Brasil (Rio, 1965), 14142.
97. Commander of Arms to President of Bahia, Salvador, December 29, 1873, APEBa/
SACP, m. 3430.
98. Sousa, Escravido, 67, 72, 102, 113.
99. Decisions 54 and 158, February 9, and June 15, 1870, CLB. I analyze one such
case in detail in Slavery, 247. For another, see Peter M. Beattie, The Tribute of Blood:
Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 18641945 (Durham, 2001), 5253.
100. Speech of Antonio Marques Perdigo Malheiro, June 10, 1871, Anais da Cmara
dos Deputados (1871), 2:52. These points are analyzed more fully by Sandra Lauderdale
Graham, Slaverys Impasse: Slave Prostitutes, Small-Time Mistresses, and the Brazilian
Law of 1871, Comparative Studies in Society and History 33:4 (1991): 68393; and
Eduardo Spiller Pena, Pajens da casa imperial: Jurisconsultas, escravido e a lei de 1871
(Campinas, Brazil, 2001), chap. 3.
101. Ira Berlin et al., Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil
War (Cambridge, UK, 1992), 187223; Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba:
The Transition to Free Labor, 18601899 (Princeton, 1985), 4862.
102. Robert W. Slenes, Na senzala, uma or: Esperanas e recordaes na formao
da famlia escravaBrasil sudoeste, sculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1999); Reis and Silva,
Negociao; Lara, Campos.
103. Laurent Dubois, The Price of Liberty: Victor Hugues and the Administration
of Freedom in Guadeloupe, 17941798, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 56:2
(April 1999): 36392.

Arming Slaves in the American Revolution

p h i l i p d . m o r g a n and
andrew jackson oshaughnessy

The American Revolution occasioned major innovations in the military

use of slaves throughout the Atlantic world. The role of slaves in the Revolutionary War in North America is well known, but the tendency to treat the
thirteen mainland colonies in isolation has obscured the signicance of the
war for the arming of slaves. Only when we incorporate the other British
Atlantic colonies does the scale of the practice become fully apparent. Indeed,
the war had more profound consequences for arming slaves in the British
Caribbean than anywhere else in the Americas. The British evacuation of slave
troops in the southern states led to the establishment of the rst permanent
peacetime army garrisons composed of slave soldiers, called the South Carolina Pioneer Corps. It became the foundation of the West India Regiments,
which formed the largest slave army of any European power between 1794
and 1833.
Powerful inducements encouraged the use of slaves as soldiers. The exigencies of war, typically shortages of manpower, made it a useful expedient. This
need was especially true in the Caribbean, where warfare was perennial, slaves
composed a high proportion of the population, and mortality rates were catastrophic among regular soldiers from Europe. Colonial ofcials and military
commanders had long observed that black troops seemed more immune to
tropical diseases than European troops. They crudely calculated that using

180

The American Revolution

181

black soldiers would spare the lives of white troops and cut the considerable
cost of garrisons. Furthermore, slaves were familiar with local terrain, resulting in their frequent use as scouts. Some commanders regarded blacks not only
as highly effective but as superior to white troops. They also appreciated the
potential to divide and rule by selectively recruiting trusted slaves to encourage loyalty and to provide incentives in a system otherwise dependent primarily on coercive authority.
Another factor recommending slaves for military service was their prior
experience in Africa. Rather than see slaves as dishonored captives, some
whites pragmatically valued them as ex-soldiers. At no time was this recognition more explicitly stated than in 1696, when the directors of the Dutch West
India Company told their representative in Curaao to consider arming newly
arrived African slaves. Since we have been told that the Negroes shipped
there [Curaao], and in particular the Angolans, are men who have served in
wars in their country, and know how to handle a gun, the Dutch ofcials
noted, we think that we could and should seize this opportunity to supply
weapons to these Negroes, each according to his own skill, and have them
exercise continually in the European fashion, along with our own militia.
The governor of Curaao seems not to have followed these directions, but that
they were made at all is striking. African groups other than Angolans also
gained a reputation for military prowess. In the Caribbean, many so-called
Coromantees, Akan-speaking peoples from the Gold Coast, had military experience, which may well account for the familiarity with guns and even cannon that they showed in late seventeenth-century Jamaican rebellions. In 1675
a Barbadian governor described Coromantees as warlike. A direct connection can be drawn between the leaders of the Akan state of Akwamu, captured
in war between 1730 and 1732, and the slave revolt of 1733 in the Danish
West Indies. In short, many slaves had served in African armies prior to their
enslavement, and, as ex-soldiers and veterans of African wars, they probably
needed little encouragement to serve again. Some of the tactics of maroons and
other rebellious slavessmall bands, skirmishing, close combatmay owe
something to homeland experiences. Military service abroad was a signicant
theme of the African diaspora.
Although the reasons for using slaves as soldiers were compelling, their
employment raised fundamental problems for the plantation system. The very
conditions that made the arming of slaves necessary, in particular acute shortages of white manpower, also made it a dangerous expedient in the perception
of slaveowners. Apart from that pragmatic and seemingly crucial reason for
not arming slaves, other rationales were at hand. The arming of slaves contradicted the alleged inferiority of blacks and undermined the racial myths that

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

justied slavery. Since the slave was, in theory, a socially dead person, often a
captive in warfare and a defeated enemy, many planters considered it anathema to convert slaves into warriors. Soldiers supposedly possessed the qualities of honor and courage, and slaves were the dishonored par excellence.
Making soldiers of slaves, then, seemed a contradiction. In the harsh, exploitative slave societies of the New World, military slavery could never be a central
institution, and slaveowner opposition to the arming of slaves was always
intense in the Americas.
The American Revolution was, in many ways, an unpropitious moment to
consider arming slaves. The size of the slave population and the proportion of
slaves in the larger colonial populations were greater than at any time in the
history of British America. Furthermore, planters were especially fearful of
rebellion owing to the dislocation caused by the war and the revolutionary
rhetoric of liberty. Some Caribbean planters blamed the spread of revolutionary ideals from America for the major slave rebellion in Jamaica in 1776. They
suspected that household slaves overheard their masters debating the merits of
the revolutionary cause and toasting liberty with too much fervor. The combatants on both sides risked alienating the support of whites in the southern
and island colonies by using slaves as soldiers. The British use of slaves as
soldiers caused many white colonists to become patriots in plantation societies
such as Virginia. The regular British army garrisons and local militia in the
Caribbean were insufcient to resist external attack, let alone a simultaneous
large-scale internal slave revolt during the American Revolution.
Yet the American Revolution was a decisive turning point in the arming of
slaves in the Americas, especially in the British Caribbean. True, the arming of
slaves was never part of a deliberate or concerted policy but rather was warily
adopted as an urgent measure in response to a crisis. Furthermore, important
precedents, outlined in the rst part of this chapter, existed from the earliest
times of European expansion, culminating in the Seven Years War. To put the
revolutionary experience in perspective requires a cursory overview of the
colonial experience. Nevertheless, the American Revolution occasioned major
innovations in the arming of slaves, in the functions they performed, and in
the scale of their operations. These radical changes become particularly evident when developments in the Caribbean and North America, places that
were deeply connected but often treated separately in historiographies, are
linked. Events in one region had repercussions in the other. We therefore
treat the two regions in turn, but always with an eye toward the intersections and connections between the two. Piers Mackesy, who wrote one of the
few histories of the American War for Independence that is not exclusively
centered on the North American theater, claims that the American War had

The American Revolution

183

been largely fought and decided in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is vital to
the Atlantic story we wish to tell.
A tradition of arming slaves arose with the beginnings of settlement in the
Americas, but the practice was more limited in scope and scaleindeed was
often about disarmingthan it was during the American Revolution. Following the metropolitan example in denying guns to potentially dangerous
groups, all colonial legislatures passed laws aimed at keeping most slaves
unarmed. Acts that were on the books to deny arms to indentured servants
(and other groups, such as Catholics) were easily modied and extended to
slaves. The rst law to forbid slaves in the British Atlantic world to bear arms
was probably the 1661 Barbados law directing slaveowners to search the
houses of slaves fortnightly for clubs, wooden swords, or other mischievous
weapons. No doubt the act enshrined customary practice, for Richard Ligon,
who lived on the island between 1647 and 1650, observed that Barbadian
slaves were not suffered to touch or handle any weapons. Other island and
mainland colonies followed the Barbadian example: in 1680 Virginia prohibited Negroes from carrying clubs, swords, guns, or other weapons of
defense or offense. Both the French Code Noir of 1685 and the Spanish Code
of 1680 forbade slaves to carry arms.
Laws categorically denied slaves access to guns, and yet in emergencies
many slave societies employed slaves as soldiers. Slave soldiers were less common in North America than in the Caribbean, but in frontier regions everywhere, at sea, and on many an individual plantation or farm, slaves often had
a surprising degree of access to rearms and weapons of many sorts. It is a
gross exaggeration to say, as Michael Bellesiles has done, that slaves did not
have a single gun. Perhaps precisely because whites denied guns to slaves,
bondmen valued all the more their possession of such banned items. Furthermore, at least some slaves access to guns was routine, a regular occurrence.
An inherent ambiguity therefore existed in colonial society between keeping
rearms out of the hands of slaves and arming them whenever it seemed
necessary or useful. And some slaves plainly armed themselves, without any
assistance from, or in opposition to, whites.
At the same time that whites generally attempted to deny rearms to their
slaves, they were always willing to make exceptions. The Spanish were pioneers in this regard, launching, for example, an attack on Providence Island in
1640 with a force that included a small group of Mulatoes and Black creoles. The Dutch, also always lacking men, were not very far behind the
Spanish in the military use of blacks. But in both cases slaves do not appear to
have been greatly used as soldiers because free blacks and mulattoes were

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

available and proved a far more palatable source of military personnel. By the
mid-seventeenth century free blacks and mulattoes were serving in formally
organized militias throughout the Spanish New World.
In the Caribbean, a cockpit of imperial rivalry, with warfare endemic and
deadly diseases frequent, the military use of slaves was nigh essential. The
English pioneer was once again Barbados, where the recruiting and arming of
slaves began in the 1660s, just when whites were leaving the island in droves.
About a third of the men mobilized during alarms, such as an imminentseeming French attack of 1707, appear to have been slaves. In 1702 Bermudas
militia numbered 750 whites and 600 slaves, the latter armed with lances; they
marched, wheeled, and advanced in formation together. In 1742 more than
one thousand Armed Negroes were present on Antigua. The French islands
seem to have gone further than the English ones in arming slaves, probably
because the French colonists were outnumbered by the English and had little
military support from the metropolis, at least before 1744.
Military expeditions in the Caribbean relied on slaves primarily as auxiliaries like those sent alongside fourteen thousand soldiers from Britain and
North America against Spains Central American and Caribbean empire in
174041. According to complaints, a few old worn-out blacks from Maryland were pressed to ll the ranks of the three thousand or so North American
troops raised for this expedition. But so-called baggage negroes, raised in the
Caribbean, were deemed vital to the success of the expeditionalthough
there was an issue of how many could be managed. In 1741 General Wentworth and Admiral Vernon, the leaders of the expedition, rejected an offer by
the Jamaican Assembly to provide ve thousand slaves for the army on Cuba
because they did not believe they could control that number of slaves in hostile
territory. Instead, they agreed to accept only one thousand. Most worked in an
unarmed capacity as pioneers or drudges rather than as shot negroes, as
they were popularly known, but at least one-third of ve hundred slaves raised
in Jamaica were so termed and so used. A limited precedent for arming independent ad hoc black corps for service abroad did, then, exist, early in the
eighteenth-century British Caribbean.
Among the British mainland colonies, greater security and insulation from
foreign attack, a much healthier environment, and a larger white population
than existed in the Caribbean meant that there was much less military use of
slaves. One exception to the extremely limited deployment of armed slaves on
the mainland was the lower South, a region that resembled the Caribbean in
being more exposed to enemy incursions and having a large slave population.
South Carolina experimented with the arming of slaves during Queen Anns
War and the Yamassee War, and in 1739 the threat posed by Spanish St.

The American Revolution

185

Augustine led South Carolina again to empower militia captains to enlist

recommended slaves, since some slaves had shown faithfulness and courage. A year later, in an expedition aimed at conquering the St. Augustine
garrison, General James Oglethorpe proposed extensive use of slaves as pioneers, although he did arm a few slaves and put them in companies. Thereafter, South Carolina never again publicly armed slaves during the colonial
period, although in 1747 the assembly passed a law allowing the drafting of
slaves during emergencies, during the Cherokee War of 1760 a motion to arm
four hundred blacks lost by only one vote in the assembly, and as late as 1770
Governor William Bull estimated that the militia could be reinforced with a
number of trusty negroes (and we have many such) not exceeding one-third of
the corps they are to join.
If the arming of slaves occurred most signicantly in emergencies and crises,
routine, regular usages also took place. Armed slaves seem to have been common on slaving vessels and on the African coast. Slaves and free blacks also
gained knowledge of arms by serving on privateering, naval, merchant, and
even pirate vessels. Individual masters always reserved the right to arm their
slaves, no matter what the public policy stated, and their actions sometimes
got them into trouble. In frontier regions, where defense and game hunting
were important concerns, planters generally had the right to arm their slaves.
Thus in Virginia, slaves on frontier plantations could use guns, but the master
was supposed to procure a permit or license for the armed slave.
In short, before the American Revolution, slaves had greater access to guns
than laws often suggested, although that access was always limited. One of the
best insights into the surprisingly widespread availability of rearms among
New World slaves is the archaeological evidence from slave sites. Almost all
have produced evidence of lead shot, gunints, and, in some cases, gun hardware. A rather remarkable example of the general distribution of arms among
Chesapeake slaves was a discovery made in one county on the eve of the
Revolution: a Committee of Inspection collected about eighty Guns, some
bayonets, swords, etc. from their slaves. Nevertheless, undoubtedly only a
minority of slaves ever had access to guns. Only about 1 percent of runaway
slaves in either Virginia or South Carolina, and only four known colonial
Georgia fugitives, had weapons. When slaves rose in revolt, generally they
used clubs, staves, hoes, axes, bills, or their bare handsmuch in the same
way that European and American rioters and rebels wielded stones, clubs, and
farm implements.
Whites always revealed great ambivalence about arming their slaves. To be
sure, evidence accumulated that slaves could be trusted and fought well, as did
the slaves who defended Providence Island against the Spanish in 164041

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

and St. Christopher and Nevis against the French in 1706. In 1740, after
praising his free black militiamen for warding off an English attack, the governor of St. Augustine noted that even among the slaves a particular steadiness
has been noted, and a desire not to await the enemy within the [fort] but to go
out to meet him. Other Europeans were less sure and described slave soldiers
on occasion as either cowardly or insolent. Even advocates of arming slaves
expressed uncertainty. When in 1734 Governor William Mathew of Antigua
proposed arming one thousand slaves, he labeled the move a dangerous
experiment. Perhaps the census takers in Tobago best summarized conventional thinking when, in 1773, they distinguished 96 percent of slaves as not
to be trusted with arms. Some whites were prepared to trust a tiny minority
of slavesone in twenty-ve, in this instancewith arms. Many planters
were not willing to go that far
The war that crystallized the ambivalence about arming slaves most acutely
was the Seven Years War, or the French and Indian War. Fred Anderson has
described this war as the most important event to occur in eighteenth-century
North America. It was, of course, a world wara great war for empire
in the limited sense applicable to eighteenth-century warfare. Viewed from
places outside the thirteen mainland colonies, Anderson claims, the Seven
Years War was far more signicant than the War of American Independence.
In North America, black enlistments were uncommon and slave enlistments
rare. Only a handful of the twelve hundred provincial troops in Virginia in
1756 and 1757 were black or mulatto. Especially in the plantation regions of
North America, white leaders were more concerned about a possible slave
rebellion than about French and Indians on the frontier. In Virginia the priorities were evident in the military appropriation for 1756: more than half
went to the militia, the agency for controlling slaves, and less than half to
the Virginia Regiment, in charge of defending the frontier. In the same year,
Charles Pinckney argued that South Carolinas militia could not be relied on to
perform any duty except keeping slaves in order.
In the Caribbean, the ambivalence about arming slaves was most acute
because there the need for armed slaves was all the more imperative. The
Seven Years War in the Caribbean was most notable for the arming of independent ad hoc black corps for service abroad. There were precedents, as in
Vernons expeditions, but now the greater scale of the conict necessitated
a greater involvement of slaves and free blacks. Thus, slaves served under
Major-General Peregrine Hopson in the conquest of French Guadeloupe in
1759 and under Major-General Robert Monckton at Martinique in 1761. The
expedition against Cuba was an even more massive undertaking in which the
importance attached to the black forces is captured by a remark of Com-

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187

modore Augustus Keppel, second in command of the naval force employed in

the attack against Havana: The more Negroes we have the better. In Cuba
after the war, the Spanish military enlarged its use of slaves and created a
company of one hundred black slaves to work in the artillery, especially in the
ammunition and storage sections. These experiments in free black corps and
extensive use of slave enlistments would serve as precedents during the American Revolution.
In summary, some colonial slaves regularly had access to guns, and many
slaves, particularly in the Caribbean, frontier, and maritime settings, quite
often played a secondary and subordinate role in armed warfare. To stress
how much a radical departure arming slaves was from so-called civilized practice, how exceptional a measure it was, does not seem fully to describe the
reality of much of slave life in the New World. Arming slaves was a dangerous
expedient, but one resorted to frequently.
The ambivalence about arming slaves continued and was accentuated during
the American Revolution. No formal British or American policy existed concerning the wisdom of the idea, and for the most part individual commanders
and leaders acted independently, depending on local circumstances. Plans to
arm slaves were regularly proposed, opposed, and discarded. Yet with no
consistent planning, the force of military exigency propelled the idea forward
but more in an erratic zigzag than in any linear way. Nevertheless, by the
end of the war, many schemes for making soldiers of slaves had been generated
and quite a few tried. That tens of thousands of slaves served as soldiers and
sailors throughout North America and the Caribbean during the Revolutionary War was a catalytic event. Never before in this pan-Atlantic world had so
many slaves served in such a concentrated period of time, and some were
formed into independent black regiments, occasionally with their peers in
chargeunprecedented events.
Why did the most ambitious schemes to arm slaves occur during the American Revolutionary War rather than the Seven Years War? They were both
global wars in which Britain faced the combined strength of France and Spain.
The difference was that Britain had no foreign allies to share the burden of the
war during the American Revolution. It also no longer enjoyed a friendly
rapport with the mainland colonists that would allow it to obtain provisions
for its army and to support the militia. The expectations of widespread internal support against the patriots proved illusory, and military commanders
were slow to exploit those willing to serve in provincial corps of Loyalists. The
consequence of this fatal isolation was that the navy was overstretched: the
British eet was inferior to the combined eets of France, Spain, and Holland.

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There were often fewer ships than islands in the eastern Caribbean. These
islands were easy prey for the French, beginning with Dominica (1778), St.
Vincent (1779), Grenada (1779), St. Kitts (1782), Montserrat (1782), and
Nevis (1782). There was little choice but to deploy slaves. Furthermore, slaves
necessarily became involved when the main focus of the war in the Americas
switched from the North to the plantation colonies in the South and in the
Caribbean after 1778.
Even before the outbreak of war, rumors that the idea of arming slaves had
found favor in ofcial political circles in England had gained currency. Thus in
the fall of 1774 William Draper, who had returned to London from a tour of
America, published a pamphlet arguing that the rebellion might be suppressed
by proclaiming Freedom to their Negroes. Arthur Lee, who was then living
in London, thought the plan to arm slaves against their masters met with
approbation from ministerial People. By early 1775, similar information had
reached America. Thus, in January a letter from England alleging that the
design of [the] administration [is] to pass an act (in case of rupture) declaring
all slaves and servants free that would take up arms against the Americans
was read out in a Philadelphia coffee house. A month or so later, General
Thomas Gage, then commanding troops in Massachusetts, intimated that
South Carolina, with its large black population, was especially vulnerable,
grimly predicting that its rice and indigo will be brought to market by Negroes instead of white people. In March, Edmund Burke openly questioned
the wisdom of arming slaves, apparently popular in governmental circles, in
the House of Commons. As early as the following month, Lord John Murray
Dunmore, governor of Virginia, began publicly threatening to arm slaves. In
May North Carolina patriots thought that there is much Reason to fear . . .
that the Slaves may be instigated and encouraged by our inveterate Enemies to
an Insurrection. In the following month, Gage contemplated arming slaves,
and it took a fellow commander, Lord William Campbell, to advise him
against the idea, telling him not to fall a prey to the Negroes. At about the
same time North Carolina governor Josiah Martins statement that nothing
could justify the design falsely imputed to me of giving encouragement to the
negroes, but the actual and declared rebellion of the Kings subjects was
interpreted as publicly avowing the measure of arming the slaves against
their masters. In August a Philadelphian received a letter from London informing him that the Ministry have thoughts of declaring all your negroes
free, and to arm them. By the fall, debates in the House of Commons openly
discussed schemes to arm slaves, and merchants in London addressed a petition to the king expressing indignation and horror at the reports of slaves
being incited to insurrection.

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As an indication of the plans that were in the air, in late 1775 Captain John
Dalrymple of the Twentieth Regiment proposed a diversion in the southern
colonies to aid General William Howes operations in the North. His plan had
three elements: rst, an independent corps would be raised in Ireland, commanded by Protestant ofcers, and sent to aid Lord Dunmore; second, Dunmore himself would recruit a large body of indentured servants and convicts in
and around the Chesapeake towns of Baltimore, Annapolis, Alexandria, and
Fredericksburg; and, nally, To these, He may, & indeed should, add the
bravest & most ingenious of the black Slaves whom He may nd all over the
Bay of Chesapeake. African-born blacks, Dalrymple averred, should not be
confused with Virginia or Maryland Black[s] born in those Provinces, for
the latter are full of Intelligence, Fidelity & Courage.
Thus, considered in context, Lord Dunmores famous proclamation of November 7, 1775, represented the culmination of an existing trend rather than a
dramatic departure. Furthermore, it was not a particularly radical statement.
It addressed indentured servants as well as slaves, as Dalrymple had suggested,
and it targeted only those who were in the hands of rebels and who were
willing and able to bear arms. It also had little impact, for it was issued on
board ship, and slaves had somehow to traverse land and water to reach the
so-called British haven. At best, about eight hundred slaves escaped to Dunmore. Nevertheless, the dramatic symbol of putting together a regiment of
escaped slavesthree hundred or soouttted in military garb with the inscription Liberty to Slaves emblazoned across the breast, was a revolutionary act, although the only action Lord Dunmores Ethiopian Regiment saw
was the inglorious rout at Great Bridge. The proclamation itself aroused a
restorm of protest. Contemporaries spoke of being struck with horror and
of daggers being placed at their throats. Hell itself could not have vomitted
anything more black than this design, wrote one Philadelphian. Some of
these reactions may have been exaggerated in order to whip patriots into a
frenzy, but the anguish was genuine enough. The furor was of such passionate
intensity as to tell British governors and commanders, if they needed telling,
that the issue of arming slaves was explosive and likely to call opprobrium
down on the head of any advocate.
From the beginning, the Caribbean and the North American theaters were
interconnected. Thus, a couple of months after Dunmores proclamation, Archibald Campbell, lieutenant colonel of the Seventy-rst regiment, serving in
North America, and a veteran of three campaigns in the West Indies, suggested
a more radical step than that taken by the Virginia governor. He proposed that
a regiment be formed in the West Indies of fourteen hundred stout Active
Negroes who would then suppress the revolt in America and, with much

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more dreaded and . . . more fatal consequences to the Rebells than the loss of
Battle, encourage the desertion of slaves. According to Campbell, the capitulation of Guadeloupe in the Seven Years War owed more to the desertion of
eight hundred French slaves in one morning than to three months of all our
Attacks. Accordingly, he continued, many Gentleman of Large Estates &
property in the different West India Islands . . . expressed their surprise that
the government did not ask them to supply slaves for military service in North
America. Nothing came of Campbells suggestion because it was too radical
and it raised the specter of potential retaliation. Reports in English newspapers claimed that American emissaries were encouraging Caribbean slaves
to rebel and were providing them with ammunition and guns. Indeed, Silas
Deane, Americas rst agent in Paris, advocated American support for an
uprising of the Caribs in St. Vincent and a slave revolt in Jamaica. Such rumors
were not theoretical for white West Indians: they thought the great slave
rebellion that engulfed Jamaica in the summer of 1776 was directly connected
to events in North America. On the British and on the American patriot
side, then, arming slaves was a way of undermining the others war efforts
whether by employing West Indian slaves in North America or by encouraging
West Indian slaves to rebel. In each case, the potential dangers outweighed the
anticipated benets.
After Dunmores actions, British commanders moved back and forth on the
idea of arming slaves. In 1776, following his recapture of New York, General
Sir William Howe offered protection to all who came within his lines. A year
later, through his aide Alexander Innes, he reversed himself, ordering all Negroes, Mollatoes, and other Improper Persons discharged from the garrison,
so as to put the provincial forces on the most respectable footing. In 1778 in
a widely publicized debate in the House of Commons, Edmund Burke offered
a ery denunciation of the policy of arming slaves, conjuring up specters of
murders, rapes, and barbarities of all kinds. Such reservations were cast aside
the following year in the wake of the British defeat at Saratoga (1777) and the
French entry into the American Revolution (1778). Sir Henry Clinton, in his
Philipsburg Proclamation (1779), ignored Burkes warning and offered freedom to rebel-owned slaves, although he resisted the temptation to follow
Dunmore in establishing slave regiments. In 1780, anxious that his proclamation was encouraging too many black fugitives to ee to the British lines,
Clinton began to reverse the policy. In the following year, as Cornwalliss army
moved northward from Charleston to Yorktown, black foraging parties had
authority to get provisions, but the British commander was sufciently nervous about what they might do that he issued orders that they were not to
carry rearms under any circumstances. British policy, insofar as there was

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such a thing, was an untidy sequence of advances and retreats, with no simple
forward movement, with respect to the idea of arming slaves.
The actions of the slaves themselves, ocking to British lines and wishing to
serve, kept the pressure on the British commanders. Murphy Stiel can stand as
one radical example. Having ed slavery in North Carolina in 1776, he joined
the Black Pioneers under General Samuel Birch. In August 1781 Stiel, then a
sergeant in the Pioneers and living in New York City, recounted how he had
repeatedly heard a Voice like a Mans (but saw no body), telling him to
inform Sir Henry Clinton, commander in chief of British forces, that Clinton
and Lord Cornwallis would put an end to the rebellion, and that the Lord
would be on their Side. Stiel told Clinton that he should Send Word to
Genl Washington That he must Surrender himself and his Troops to the Kings
Army, and that if he did not the wrath of God would fall upon them. If
Washington refused, Clinton must say that he would raise all the Blacks
in America to ght against the Americans. Military experience and evangelical Christianity fused for Stiel to form an apocalyptic vision. What Clinton
thought about such a radical proposal can only be imagined.
As the war effort became more critical on the mainland, the British increasingly became willing to embody separate units composed entirely of escaped
slaves and thereby to follow Dunmores and various West Indian precedents. In
1779 the small British garrison at Savannah, under siege, formed a body of
two hundred to three hundred armed blacks that took part in skirmishes
outside British lines. After the siege was lifted, however, Savannah residents
sought their disarming, because ostensibly they behaved with great Insolence. When George Galphins fortied plantation house, Fort Dreadnought,
fell to patriot forces in 1781, the captured garrison consisted of sixty-one
slaves, many of them armed, and fourteen armed boatmen. During the British
occupation of Charleston in 17811782, cavalry units consisting entirely of
fugitive slaves patrolled the countryside outside of the city. Black soldiers in
South Carolina, one patriot general observed, aroused the resentment and
detestation of every American who possesses common feelings. In early 1782
Dunmore, who was then in Charleston, along with John Cruden, proposed an
elaborate scheme to raise ten thousand black soldiers. Cruden reasoned that
the slaves who became soldiers would be only changing one master for another, because they would serve the king forever; also, by recruiting the most
hardy, intrepid, and determined blacks, they would keep the slaves in good
order, and their own military discipline would prevent cabals, tumults, and
even rebellion. Dunmore added that blacks were not only better tted for
service in this warm climate than white men, but they are also better guides,
may be got on much easier terms, and are perfectly attached to our sovereign.

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He thought blacks were as soon disciplined as any set of raw men that I know
of, and envisaged blacks as noncommissioned ofcers. A few months later, an
even more desperate General Alexander Leslie thought that putting arms in the
hands of blacks would soon become indispensably necessary and began
doing just that. By the spring of 1782 the British reportedly had about seven
hundred African Americans under arms and in uniform, including several
mounted troops.
If British policy toward arming slaves meandered, though in increasingly
radical directions, patriotic Americans were generally more uniform and consistent in their opposition to the idea. The reason, of course, was that many
Americans had a direct stake in slavery. An occasional idealistic voice could be
heard, even from the South. Thus in June 1775 a resident of Fredericksburg,
Virginia, thought proclaiming freedom to slaves who would join in the defense
of America a dangerous but necessary Measure. The incompatibility of
waging a glorious struggle for liberty while holding many in slavery was one
strand of this anonymous mans argument, but warding off the promises of the
British was the other. As the Continental Army took shape in the summer of
1775, opposition to arming slaves mounted. In July 1775 the adjutant general
of the American army, Horatio Gates, in an action that predated Howes order
by two years, instructed recruiting ofcers that they should not enlist any
stroller, negro, or vagabond. And at a council of war later that year, American generals excluded free blacks and slaves from possible reenlistment. Individual states generally followed suit. Gun ownership among blacks also became a ticklish issue. One Committee of Observation in New Jersey in 1776
ordered that all blacks with guns or other weapons turn them in until the
present troubles are settled. When in August 1776 a former member of Congress from New Jersey drafted a plan for creating a battalion of slaves
arguing that Neither the Hue of their Complexion nor the Blood of Africk
have any Connection with Cowardice but offering reassurance that he would
always restrict their Numbers, so as not to suffer them to bear any large
Proportion to the whitesJohn Adams responded that Your Negro Battallion will never do. S. Carolina would run out of their Wits at the least Hint of
such a Measure.
Once, however, Congress began to x troop quotas for the states, from
1777 onward, the pressure to enlist blacks mounted. Northern states with
small black populations found it easier to arm slaves than did southern states.
Occasional ambitious proposals surfaced, although they bore no immediate
fruit. In 1777 in Philadelphia, one Antibiastes argued that a general emancipation of the Slaves, enlisted in the army or the navy ought immediately to
take place, with compensation for their masters. Thomas Kench, an artillery

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captain who in 1778 proposed a detachment of ninety-ve black soldiers

(eleven of whom would have specialized roles) to be overseen by ve white
ofcers, was rebuffed by the Massachusetts Legislature. Kench thought such a
separate regiment would act as an incentive for blacks to outdo the white
men. Similarly, when the Rhode Island legislature debated and eventually
passed a slave enlistment act, some objected to slaves defending the liberties
of America. The First Rhode Island Regiment was, in reality, composed of not
only slaves but also of free blacks, mulattoes, and Narragansett Indians. A
recent study has found more than 700 black Rhode Island soldiers, of whom
142 were enslaved at the time they were enlisted; most served between 1777
and 1780. As Benjamin Quarles notes, the New England states probably furnished more black soldiers than any other region. Of southern states, Maryland came closest to authorizing the arming of slaves. In 1780 the legislature
seemed on the verge of passing a proposal to raise a regiment of 750 slaves.
Major Edward Giles of Maryland was enthusiastic about raising a black
Regiment, believing that the Blacks will make excellent Soldiers. Experience proved their worthiness, he said, and opponents were forever frightening themselves with Bugbears of their own Creation. But the bill did not pass.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who disliked it, offers insights into why it failed:
he thought the compensation inadequate, spoke darkly of his fear of bad
consequences, and described it as a harsh and violent measure, unfair and
oppressive because it applied only to slaveowners with six or more slaves
and took away a persons property. The refusal of the political leaders of the
Upper South, where many did open their hearts to the idealism of the Revolution, to consider the enlistment of slaves indicates the hurdles the idea faced.
The fate of the congressional recommendation of March 1779 that South
Carolina and Georgia raise three thousand slaves is even more instructive. The
planters of the Lower South were horried. Christopher Gadsdens reaction
was typical: resentment and disgust ran high, he said, at this very dangerous
and impolitic Step. The South Carolina Council was so irked that it considered
making the state neutral and dropping out of the war effort. John Laurens, an
ardent but rather solitary proponent of arming slaves in the Lower South, railed
at the howlings of a triple-headed monster in which prejudice Avarice &
pusillanimity were united. The younger Laurenss dream of black troops
wearing white uniforms, faced with red, because they would form a good
Contrast with the Complexion of the Soldier remained simply thatnothing
but a dream. Furthermore, when in December 1781 General Nathanael Greene
recommended that South Carolina recruit at least two thousand slaves and
form four black regiments, each with a corps of Pioneers and a corps of
Articers, he encountered a frosty responseold prejudices and the love of

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interest was his indictmenteven though he had not the least doubt that
they would make good Soldiers. As the legislature debated Greenes proposal, one South Carolinian acknowledged that he was very much alarmed
on the Subject of arming the Blacks and reckoned that only about a dozen
assemblymen were in favor and a hundred opposed. He hoped that its defeat
would rest for ever & a day.
The onset of the American Revolutionary War in the Caribbean did not initially occasion anything as dramatic as Dunmores proclamation, but it did
create a demand for more black sailors, some use of free blacks to build
fortications, and a heightened sense of insecurity. The insecurity owed much
to the famines that began sweeping the islands because of curtailed commerce
and the movement of some British troops from islands to mainland, which in
turn helps account for the Jamaican slave insurrection of 1776. Insecurity
became panic with the entry of France and then Spain into the war in 1778
1779. The West Indian islands were imperiled by foreign invasion as never
before. Once Dominica capitulated in September 1778 to a French expeditionary force, the recruitment of slaves intensied. Governor William Burt of the
Leeward Islands conscripted 5 percent of the slaves of St. Kitts to build fortications, and, in the event of an invasion, he planned to organize slaves into
armed parties to act as foragers and attack the enemy at night. Also in the fall
of 1778, the British abandoned Philadelphia primarily to free ve thousand
troops for the invasion of St. Lucia, the gateway to French Martinique, the
headquarters of the French navy. Once St. Lucia fell, slaves built all the defenses that the British required. Slaves were gradually being drawn into greater
involvement in the Caribbean war effort.
In these early years, whites found free blacks more acceptable as soldiers
than as slaves. In the fall of 1778, in response to the heightened French threat, a
Jamaican creole, soon joined by others, proposed a professional regiment of
free blacks and free coloreds, an extension of separate companies within the
militia that had been noted for their extraordinary alertness in Military manoeuvres. These Jamaican whites argued that a corps of native-born mulattoes would be able to withstand the labor and marching that proved so
arduous for Europeans. The entry of France into the war also saw Caribbean
free blacks arriving in North America. In 1779 Admiral Charles dEstaing
set sail from Saint Domingue with an expeditionary force that included 545
free black and free colored volunteers. They played a minor roleseemingly
doing little more than digging trenches, although one died and seven were
wounded defending their handiworkin the failed two-month siege of Savannah. DEstaing did learn that his black soldiers from Saint Domingue were

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abstemious, for they would not drink the mixture of sugar, water and fermented molasses which make up the nectar the Americans call grog; by
contrast, he sadly noted, it was wine for most of our ofcers and all our
soldiers. One company of 62 free blacks and free coloreds escorted casualties
to Charleston and was the sole French troop serving during the siege of that
city in the spring of 1780.
Even as insecurity heightened, opposition to the arming of slaves and free
blacks was still formidable in the Caribbean, as Stephen Fuller, the agent for
Jamaica, emphatically made clear when acting on behalf of the West India
lobby in London. In December 1778 he rebutted the idea that many of the
Domestic Negroes by being Armed might contribute in some degree to island
defense, maintaining that melancholy experience had shown that very little
trust can be placed even in such of them as are considered the most condential. The best policy, he averred, was to keep slaves disarmed, and to
remove them from every opportunity of using rearms. Arming them promised relief for the present but was pregnant with future evils; the Hoe &
the Pick-axe were the only t instruments for slaves. Furthermore, he argued
that only nine hundred sencible free black men inhabited Jamaica, and
dependence might be placed on at most ve hundred. He warned that the free
negroes & mulattoes are not to be trusted in corps composed of themselves
only, & the incorporating of them with the whites will not be endured.
Continuing threats of invasion and actual invasions largely trumped the
fears of Fuller and others like him. During the invasion scare of 1779, the
Barbados legislature voted to arm slaves, and many, according to William
Dickson, were armed with swords and spears. The following year, Antigua
armed one thousand slaves and hired the equivalent of another thousand for
pioneering work. When the French invaded particular islands, the slaves often
put up erce resistance. In 1781, during the French invasion of Tobago, a corps
of armed slaves served with undaunted courage against French regulars. In
1782 one observer on St. Kitts thought that there were as many Frenchmen
killed by negroes, only for coming onto the estates they belonged to, as were
destroyed by all the troops we had to defend the Island. These slave irregulars
almost managed to ambush and capture the enemy commander-in-chief, and
the French threatened to lay waste to the island if their masters did not bring
them to heel. In the same year, Jamaica conscripted more than ve thousand
slaves during the period of martial law, and the governor began compiling lists
of all slaves who have distinguished themselves for their attachment & delity
to their masters, for their knowledge of the country, the woods, and use of
arms. Nevertheless, the legislature rejected his proposal to arm trusted slaves
with guns and bills as an expedient of too dangerous a nature to adopt. Still,

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Governor Campbell managed to persuade the legislature to permit the creation

of two regiments of free blacks and free coloreds. Three years earlier the island
had seen the temporary, ad hoc creation of a regiment of free colored people
that was part of a professional force, salaried, well equipped, and under army
discipline, but now the legislature agreed to fund the plan, and soon a third
regiment was formed. The most novel military developments in the deployment of blacks occurred in British-occupied St. Lucia, in part because of its
strategic importance overlooking Martinique, but also because the military
commanders did not have to consult with planters or an elected legislature.
There Brigadier General Edward Mathew gathered slaves from many places
and assembled the core of the rst permanent black army regiment in the
British West Indies.
A key reason for the novel deployment of blacks in the Caribbean was the
high attrition rate of white troops. The British lost more than 5,000 troops
during their brief occupation of Havana in 176263, exceeding their total
losses in North America throughout the Seven Years War. During the Revolutionary War, 11 percent of European soldiers died aboard troop transports en
route to the Caribbean. The annual mortality rate of soldiers, once in the
region, was 15 percent, compared to 6 percent of those stationed in New York
and 1 percent in Canada. The losses in the West Indies accounted for about
6,000 men, more than half the deaths in North America, estimated at about
10,000. Of the 1,008 men of the Seventy-ninth Regiment stationed in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1778, scarcely a man remained of the original number
twelve months later. The high mortality rates among white troops had strategic consequences including the British decision to abandon San Juan (seized in
an expedition conducted by Governor John Dalling against Spanish Central
America in the fall of 1779) only seven months after its capture, owing to the
deaths of more than three-quarters of the force, caused primarily by disease.
Mutinies and desertion were also more common among troops going to the
West Indies than to other regions. Punishments in the West Indies exceeded all
those in other postings, an indication of the greater indiscipline present among
troops in the region.
During the war and the early postwar period, whites drew attention to the
healthiness of blacks. As John Hunter noted, The Negroes afford a striking
example of the power acquired by habit of resisting the causes of fevers; for,
though they are not entirely exempted from them, they suffer innitely less
than Europeans. He pointed in particular to the negroes who were sent
along with the troops against Fort St. Juan, of whom scarcely any died, although few or none of the soldiers survived the expedition. Similarly, in
1783, Thomas Dancer noted that the three hundred to four hundred slaves

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brought to Jamaica by John McGillivray, a provincial colonel, from Georgia

and employed on public fortications were in the highest state of health
during the[ir] hard labour. Five years later, Hunter argued that blacks were
not only useful as pioneers and servants, saving white soldiers from certain
duties of fatigue, but should be employed as soldiers, with black and European troops intermixed, so as to save the European troops from such parts
of regimental duty as may be injurious to their health.
In the Caribbean in particular in the later years of the Revolutionary War,
slaves and free blacks played a major role at sea as well as on land. The
desperation of the navy for manpower brought black recruits, both slave and
free, onto British warships. In 1783 the Antiguan legislature complained of the
desertion of their slaves and generally their most valuable slaves who have
been taken away from English Harbour in his Majestys ships. Seamen apparently blocked planters from boarding naval vessels to recover their runaways.
During the Revolutionary War, John Perkins, a colored man, rose from piloting the agship of the Jamaica Squadron to commanding a schooner tender
and then to being lieutenant in command of a man-of-war. He would command frigates in the French Revolutionary Wars and eventually die in Kingston. He was the only British naval ofcer to spend his entire career on one
station, without ever visiting England. Privateers also increasingly employed
blacks. In 1779 a Dutch sloop trading between Curaao and Hispaniola had a
number of blacks on board; when captured by an English privateer, the Dutch
captain declared that the blacks were all free men, willingly acting as crew. The
captain of the English privateer took a number of these same black men as
crew members, promising them a share of any prize money won on the way
with their help.
In 1782 a United States naval vessel took a Bermudian privateer as its prize
in Carolina waters. Only ve members of the seventy-ve-man crew were
white, all ofcers; the sailors were all black slaves. At the ensuing vice admiralty court trial, the Massachusetts justices broke with precedent and offered
the slaves their freedom rather than consider them forfeited chattel to be
sold at auction. To a man, the Bermudian blacks declined the offer and asked
instead to be sent to their island home on the next ag-of-truce; rather than
embrace the freedom offered to them by the new republic, they chose to return
to Bermuda and slavery. They chose to return to the island of their birth,
their families, and, by comparison with most slaves and some freedmen, a
protable way of life to which they were accustomed. They did not go emptyhanded. Sixty of them took passage on an American ag-of-truce ship bound
for New York. Off Cape Cod, they shouted Huzzah for Bermuda! and rose
up with other prisoners on board to seize the vessel. On reaching Bermuda,

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the ship was condemned as their prize. Such were the possibilities and ambiguities of arming slaves.
The American Revolutionary War considerably expanded the opportunities
for New World slaves to serve with arms on land or at sea. Britain became
increasingly desperate for manpower as it faced the possibility of a defeat that
might entail not only the loss of America but the entire British Empire. Its very
future as a global power was at stake. Britain simultaneously faced the danger
of rebellion in Ireland, the threat of a foreign invasion in the summer of 1779,
and domestic revolution with the Gordon Riots in London in 1780. It became
more difcult to recruit at home owing to nancial constraints and to the
reluctance of men to enlist. Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for
America, was willing to consider almost any source of manpower including
unprecedented numbers of Irish Catholics, traditionally debarred from service
in the British army owing to the Test Acts, and even American prisoners of war
from South Carolina. Thus, not only was the geographic scope wider, but
qualitatively the arming of slaves assumed new dimensionsrst the raising
of ad hoc, all-black regiments, then the openness to black noncommissioned
ofcers, and nally the embryonic emergence of permanent black garrisons.
Furthermore, the scale was greater than ever before. By the end of the war,
some British planners envisaged recruiting as many as ten thousand black
soldiers in particular places. Overall, perhaps about thirty thousand blacks,
some free but most slaves, served during the American Revolutionary War,
admittedly more as pioneers, auxiliaries, and domestics than in an army capacity. Still, in North America, about ve thousand black Americans served in
the Continental Army, another thousand or so in the navy and on privateers,
and perhaps twelve thousand on land and at sea on the British side. In the
Caribbean, at least twelve thousand blacks served on both land and sea.
But these numbers must be put in perspective. The Revolutionary War saw a
signicant use of slaves as soldiers and auxiliaries, but as a proportion of the
total war effort, they were always a minor component. The six thousand or so
African Americans who served in the Continental Army and in the patriot
forces at sea represented less than 3 percent of total patriot mobilization,
including state militias, although in 1778, when it is possible to identify the
black presence in individual regiments of the Continental Army, it ranged
from 6 to 13 percent. About half a million Britons were under arms in the
course of the conict, representing about one in seven or eight of the 3.8
million eligible British men (this proportion was greater than in the Seven
Years War, in which the military participation rate was about one in nine or
ten, but less than in the Napoleonic Wars, when it was about one in four or

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ve). The Hessian troops numbered about thirty thousand overall and the
Loyalist troops another twenty thousand or so; therefore, the roughly twentyfour thousand slaves serving on the British side represented about 4 percent of
the whole British war effort. Their numbers were impressive, however, in
relation to the size of the British army (including Hessians and Provincials)
specically assigned to the West Indies or to North America, which amounted
to slightly more than forty-four thousand men in July 1779, together with
another seventy-ve hundred in Canada.
The United States did not arm slaves on a similar scale until the Civil War,
but the situation was radically different in the Caribbean, where the British
evacuation of slave soldiers in the southern states led to the establishment of
the rst permanent peacetime army garrisons composed of slaves, the South
Carolina Corps. They in turn formed the embryo of the largest European slave
army in the Americas, the West India Regiments, which began with two regiments in 1795 and reached their full complement of twelve by 1798. Ironically, during the period 17951808, the British government became the biggest individual customer for African slaves, buying about one in ten of those
imported into the islands to serve in its army. The successful use of slave
soldiers in the American Revolution helps explain the willingness of the imperial government to repeat the experiment on a more massive scale during the
French Revolutionary Wars. Of course, Frances militarization of its black
population was part of the inspiration, as was Britains own Indian precedent,
its native, or sepoy, regiments. Yet Sir John Vaughan, who championed and
implemented this scheme to recruit thousands of slaves into standard regiments, was present at General Moncktons conquest of Martinique in 1761
62, in which slaves were used as auxiliaries, and, more important, he had
served as commander-in-chief in the Eastern Caribbean during the American
Revolution (17791781). He was convinced that war in the Caribbean could
be prosecuted only by opposing Blacks to Blacks.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, a diaspora of black soldiers and sailors,
their military experiences seared into their minds, scattered throughout the
Atlantic world. Perhaps the most unlikely destination was Brunswick, Germany, which in the summer of 1783 witnessed the arrival of a negro drumcorps brought from America by General Riedesel. After the British evacuation of Georgia, some black troops calling themselves The King of Englands
soldiers decamped to the Savannah River swamps, where they waged guerilla
warfare for at least another ve years against their ex-masters. In 1783 slaves
armed with cutlasses, clubs, and pikes left St. Augustine, Florida, with Colonel
Andrew Deveauxs band of Loyalist irregulars to wrest Nassau, Bahamas,
from the Spaniards. Perhaps some of them were responsible for plundering

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

whites on the island of Abaco with Muskets and xd Bayonets four years
later. With echoes to his past, Lord Dunmore, the governor of the Bahamas,
issued a proclamation of amnesty for all fugitive slaves who would surrender
themselves. In 1793, in response to the French threat, a former East Florida
Loyalist, Denys Rolle, argued that slaves of his in Exuma should be armed and
go on patrols, since they would defend their masters land as if it were their
own. Of the black exodus to Nova Scotia about a third or more had been
enrolled in British armies, and many lived in towns such as Birchtown, named
after their military commanders. When in 1794 Governor Zachary Macaulay
reorganized the militia in Sierra Leone, a place peopled by black Nova Scotians
and Londons black poor, he allowed each company of thirty-ve men to elect
its own captain, lieutenant, and three sergeants. As a result, black ofcers
sometimes commanded white troops, and, when some European ofcials protested, Macaulay pointed to their proven military experience in the American
War. The black Nova Scotians named three streets in Freetown, Sierra Leone,
after generalsTarleton, Rawdon, and Howewith whom they had served
in the Revolutionary War.
African Americans who had served on the patriot side during the Revolutionary War were also proud of their accomplishments. Latchom, a Virginia
slave, gained his freedom for saving General John Cropper when he was stuck
in a marsh and about to be bayoneted; Latchom shot Croppers British assailant and then carried the general to safety, though he weighed about two
hundred pounds. Cropper purchased Latchoms freedom. In Connecticut the
Superior Court liberated Jack Arabas, who had enlisted in the army with his
masters consent, served three years, found himself reclaimed by his master,
and then successfully sued for his freedom. Service at sea offered greater opportunity for North American blacks than action on land. For this reason, no
doubt, James Forten volunteered as a privateer, and when, in 1781, he was
captured and offered English freedom rather than imprisonment on the prison
hulk Jersey, he rejected the offer, insisting, I have been taken prisoner for the
liberties of my country, and never will prove a traitor to her interest. Applying for a Revolutionary War pension in 1836, Jehu Grant, at least eighty years
of age, who escaped from a Tory master in Rhode Island and served ten
months in the American army of the Revolutionary War, spoke of the
songs of liberty that saluted my ear, [and] thrilled through my heart. Military
experiences changed the lives of many individual African Americans.
The use of slave troops helped undermine the slave regime in both subtle
and overt ways, as many planters had feared. The British often did not make
good their promises of freedom to slaves who left their patriot masters, but
they were nevertheless forced to manumit many slaves, particularly those who

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201

had fought on the British side, resulting in a large rise in the number of free
blacks in London, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone. The use of slave troops
exposed the contradictions within slavery. It demonstrated that slaves were
indeed capable of the courage and honor that the plantation regime sought to
deny. The condence and skills derived by the slaves is a matter of speculation,
in the absence of any written accounts by veterans, but among the trusted
slave soldiers from St. Domingue (Haiti) who served in the French siege of
Savannah (1779) were many future heroes of the Haitian Revolution. Granville Sharpe also thought that stolen and reenslaved Sierra Leonians, hardened fellows by Service on board the English Man of War; & in the British
Army in America, played a major role in the St. Domingue slave revolt of
1791. Arming slaves, as Dr. George Pinckard, a regimental surgeon in Barbados, recognized, would instruct them that they are men.
Notes
We wish to thank Christopher Brown, Philip Boucher, Stephen Conway, David Eltis,
Jillian Galle, Ronald Hoffman, Michael Jarvis, Wim Klooster, Paul E. Kooperman, Cassandra Pybus, and Louis Wilson for their assistance.
1. The best studies are Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, 1961), and Sylvia Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J., 1991).
2. WIC directors to Governor Joan Doncker, November 13, 1676, Niuewe WestIndische Compagnie 467, fol. 19, Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (thanks to Wim
Klooster for this reference); John Thornton, The Coromantees: An African Cultural
Group in Colonial North America and the Caribbean, Journal of Caribbean History
32:12 (1998): 161178; John K. Thornton, War, the State, and Religious Norms in
Coromantee Thought: The Ideology of an African American Nation, in Robert Blair
St. George, ed., Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000),
181200; Monica Shuler, Akan Slave Rebellions in the British Caribbean, Savacou 1
(1970): 831; Ray A. Kea, When I die, I shall return to my own land: An Anima Slave
Rebellion in the Danish West Indies, 17331734, in John Hunwick and Nancy Lawler,
eds., The Cloth of Many Colored Silks: Papers on History and Society, Ghanaian and
Islamic, in Honor of Ivor Wilks (Evanston, 1996), 159193. For other discussions of the
slaves African military background, see other work by John K. Thornton: African
Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion, American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1101
1113; Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 14001800 (New York,
1998), 280, 293298, 306, 309; African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution, Journal of
Caribbean History 25 (1991): 5880; The African Experience of the 20. And Odd
Negroes Arriving in Virginia in 1619, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 55 (1998):
421434; and Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 15001800 (London, 1999).
3. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 1314; Orlando Patterson, Slavery
and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 288293, 308314;

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 17701823 (Ithaca,
N.Y., 1975), 7376.
4. Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution
and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000), 153; Woody Holton, Forced Founders:
Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel
Hill, 1999).
5. Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 17751783 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 518.
6. Jerome S. Handler, Freedmen and Slaves in the Barbados Militia, Journal of
Caribbean History 19:1 (May 1984): 78; Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The
Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York, 2000), 72, 75, 76; William W. Hening,
The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols. (Philadelphia, 18101823), 2:481; David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of
Master-Slave Relations in Antigua with Implications for Colonial British America (Baltimore, 1985), 139; Elsa V. Goveia, The West Indian Slave Laws of the 18th Century
(Barbados, 1970), 18, 40, 45, 46. For other laws restricting the giving of guns to slaves,
see Marvin L. Michael Kay and Lorin Lee Cary, Slavery in North Carolina, 17481775
(Chapel Hill, 1995), 68; Elsa V. Goveia, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at
the End of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, Conn., 1965), 156; Peter M. Voelz,
Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York,
1993), 353357.
7. Bellesiles, Arming America, 97.
8. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 16301641: The Other Puritan
Colony (New York, 1993), 289 (for the quotation); Thornton, Africa and Africans, 279;
Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East
Jersey (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 12. Also see Voelz, Slave and Soldier, 23; Jane Landers,
Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, Ill., 2000), 22, 2960, 202228; Herbert S.
Klein, The Colored Militia of Cuba: 15681868, Caribbean Studies 6 (1966): 1727;
Gerret Specht to the WIC, January 21, 1767, NWIC 318, Algemeen Rijksarchief (The
Hague) (thanks to Wim Klooster, for this reference); Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch
World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (Bloomington, Ind., 1993),
237240. For arming free blacks or coloreds, see Allan J. Keuthe, The Status of the Free
Pardo in the Disciplined Militia of New Granada, Journal of Negro History 56 (1971):
105117; Jackie R. Booker, Needed but Unwanted: Black Militiamen in Veracruz,
Mexico, 17601810, Historian 55 (Winter 1993): 259276; Joseph P. Sanchez, African Freedmen and the Fuero Militar: A Historical Overview of Pardo and Moreno Militiamen in the Late Spanish Empire, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 3
(1994): 165184; Ben Vinson III, Free Colored Voices: Issues of Representation and
Racial Identity in the Colonial Mexican Militia, Journal of Negro History 80 (1995):
170182; Stewart R. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in PreRevolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens, Ga., 2001), esp. 5277, 226265; and Ben
Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico
(Stanford, 2001).
9. Handler, Freedmen and Slaves, Journal of Caribbean History 19:1 (1984): 89,
11, 13, 17; Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels, 118122; Governor Benjamin Bennett to
William Popple, January 12, 1702, and Bennett to the Council of Trade and Plantations,

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203

August 19, 1702, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series (London 2000), vol. 20, no.
25, and vol. 21, no. 1014; Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in the French West Indies
(Lexington, Ky., 1966), 53, 55; Clarence J. Munford, The Black Ordeal of Slavery and
Slave Trading in the French West Indies, 16251715, 3 vols. (Lewiston, N.Y., 1991),
3:752, 754.
10. Richard Harding, Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British
Expedition to the West Indies, 17401742 (London, 1991), 74, 91, 130, 133, 143, 168
169; David Syrett, The Raising of American Troops for Service in the West Indies
During the War of Austrian Succession, 17401, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical
Research 73 (2000): 2032; Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739
1763 (Oxford, 1936), 254. See also John R. McNeill, The Ecological Basis of Warfare in
the Caribbean, 17001804, in Maarten Ultee, ed., Adapting to Conditions: War and
Society in the Eighteenth Century (University, Ala., 1986), 2642.
11. In general, see Hening, ed., Statutes at Large, 1:226, 251, 336, 3:251, 336, 4:119,
5:17, 6:533, 7:95; Benjamin Quarles, The Colonial Militia and Negro Manpower,
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (1959): 643652, esp. 644645; William M.
Wiecek, The Statutory Law of Slavery and Race in the Thirteen Mainland Colonies of
British America, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 35 (1977), 258280, esp. 268;
Bellesiles, Arming America, 76. For the Carolinas, see Thomas Cooper and David J.
McCord, eds., The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, 10 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1836
41), 7:33, 347349, 349351, 3:108110, 9:645663; Peter H. Wood, Black Majority:
Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York,
1974), 126128; William L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10
vols. (Raleigh, N.C., 18861890), 2:178, 254; John Tate Lanning, ed., The St. Augustine
Expedition of 1740 (Columbia, S.C., 1954), 1112, 17, 25, 62, 72, 73, 85, 93, 9697,
9899, 102, 114, 126, 129130, 132, 148, 169, 173 (the actual number of slaves used as
pioneers in this expedition is never specied); Rodney E. Baine, General James Oglethorpe and the Expedition Against St. Augustine, Georgia Historical Quarterly 84
(2000): 197229 (which says little about black participation); John R. Alden, John Stuart
and the Southern Colonial Frontier: A Study of Indian Relations, War, Trade, and Land
Problems in the Southern Wilderness, 17541775 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1944), 113114;
William Bull to Earl of Hillsborough, November 30, 1770, in K. G. Davies, ed., Documents of the American Revolution, 17701783 (Shannon, Ireland, 1972), 2:273.
12. For the slave trade and the African coast, see K. G. Davies, The Royal African
Company (London, 1957), 227; David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas
(Cambridge, U.K., 2000), 148, 226, 228229, 231, 233, 250; Robin Law, Warfare on
the West African Slave Coast, 16501850, in R. Brian Ferguson and Neil L. Whitehead,
eds., War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (Santa Fe, N.M.,
1992), 103126, esp. 109, 115116; E. Arnot Robertson, The Spanish Town Papers:
Some Sidelights on the American War of Independence (New York, 1959), 131. For other
vessels, see Hodges, Root and Branch, 67; Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 21;
W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 1315; Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed
Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000), 166; David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

Century (Exeter, Eng., 1990), esp. 262; Carl E. Swanson, Predators and Prizes: American
Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 17391748 (Columbia, S.C., 1991), 127; N. A. M.
Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1986), 159
160; Nicholas Rogers, Archipelagic Encounters: War, Race, and Labour Along the
Caribbean Frontier, 17401750 (unpublished paper). For individual masters, see Philip
D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake
and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 390391; Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial
Georgia, 17301775 (Athens, Ga., 1984), 123; Handler, Freedmen and Slaves, 15;
Holton, Forced Founders, xiiixv; B. W. Higman, Montpelier, Jamaica: A Plantation
Community in Slavery and Freedom, 17391912 (Mona, Jamaica, 1998), 101102; Kay
and Cary, Slavery in North Carolina, 329330 n. 58. For frontier regions, see Hening,
Statutes at Large, 3:459; 4:131; 12:182; Quarles, Colonial Militia, Mississippi Valley
Historical Review 45 (1959): 648; Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 117; O. Nigel
Bolland, The Formation of a Colonial Society: Belize, from Conquest to Crown Colony
(Baltimore, 1977), 30, 7377, 84; Carl J. Ekberg, Colonial Ste. Genevieve: An Adventure
on the Mississippi Frontier (Tucson, 1996), 348349; Edward Rutledge Jr. to John Rutledge, April 8, 1788, Rutledge Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
Douglas V. Armstrong, The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and
Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St. Anns Bay, Jamaica (Urbana, Ill.,
1990), 177.
13. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 139, 330, 390391; Wood, Slavery in Colonial
Georgia, 185; Higman, Montpelier, 216; Armstrong, Old Village, 175; Betty Wood,
Womens Work, Mens Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia
(Athens, 1995), 45. We are grateful to Jillian Galle of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Foundation, who, along with Fraser Neiman, is coordinating a major comparative study
of slave sites in Virginia and who provided detailed information about ve sites where
there is evidence of much lead shot (eighty-seven pieces at one dwelling on Mulberry
Row, Monticello, for instance), gunints, gun barrel parts, gunlock parts, trigger guards,
pistol barrels, and so on. For example, at the Clifts plantation, 17201735, forty-seven
pieces of shot, one gunint, ninety-six int debitages, one trigger guard, one pistol barrel,
and one cock were found.
14. Kupperman, Providence Island, 170 n. 72, 291, 338; Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and
Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 16241713 (Chapel Hill,
N.C., 1972), 144, 259; Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 38; Gaspar, Bondmen
and Rebels, 119; Pares, War and Trade, 253, 255; State of the Island of Tobago, June 24
to May 1, 1773, CO 101/17, folio 181, Public Record Ofce, London.
15. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in
British North America, 17541766 (New York, 2000), xv, 160; James Titus, The Old
Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia,
S.C., 1991), 7888; John Ferling, Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and
Indian War? Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94 (1986): 307328; Bellesiles, Arming America, 151. For other colonies practices, see Walter Clark, ed., State
Records of North Carolina, 26 vols. (Winston, N.C., 18951914), 22:370380; New
York Historical Society, Collections 24 (1892), 61, 71, 73, 183, 287, 365, 385, 387, 399,
403, 407, 419, 421, 427, 429, 441, 443; Connecticut Historical Society, Collections 9

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205

(1903), 15, 37, 38, 53, 101, 103, 123, 141, 160, 169, 170, 172, 182, 211, 215, 226; and
Harold E. Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, 1990), 168,
174, 175.
16. Marshall Smelser, The Campaign for the Sugar Islands, 1759: A Study of Amphibious Warfare (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1955), 37, 52, 98 (Moores proposal); David Syrett, The
Siege and Capture of Havana, 1762 (London, 1970), xiv, xviii, 2122 (Egremont), 38,
94, 100, 107, 137, 195 (Keppel), 210, 259, 324; Daniel E. Walker, Colony versus
Crown: Raising Black Troops for the British Siege on Havana, 1762, Journal of Caribbean History 33:12 (1999): 7483; Klein, Colored Militia of Cuba, 20.
17. Frey, Water from the Rock, 70.
18. William Draper, The Thoughts of a Traveller upon Our American Disputes (London, 1774), 21; Arthur Lee to Richard Henry Lee, December 6, 1774, Lee Family Papers,
as cited in Holton, Forced Founders, 140. See also Charles W. Carey Jr., These Black
Rascals: The Origins of Lord Dunmores Ethiopian Regiment, Virginia Social Science
Journal 31 (1996): 6577; William Bradford to James Madison, Jan. 4, 1775, in William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal, eds., The Papers of James Madison
(Chicago, 1962), 1:132 (also see Madison to Bradford, November 1774, in ibid., 1:129
130 and June 1775, 1:153); Alden, John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier, 171n
(Gage letter, c. February 1775); Edmund Burke, Speeches and Letters on American Affairs (London, 1908), 102; Jon Sensbach, A Separate Canaan: The Making of an AfroMoravian World in North Carolina, 17631840 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 88; Quarles,
Negro in the American Revolution, 21 (Dunmore), 111 (Gage and Campbell); Peter
Force, ed., American Archives, 4th ser., 3:8 (Martin), 256 (Philadelphian), 10101011
(petition), 6:1830 (debate). See also ibid., 2:42.
19. Captain John Dalrymple, Project for Strengthening General Howes Operations
in the North by a Diversion in the South without taking off the Troops, 1775?, George
Germain Papers, vol. 4, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan (the proposal is in the 1775 volume and may date to October, when Howe succeeded Gage as the
British commander-in-chief). See also Frey, Water from the Rock, 68.
20. Still the best study of Dunmores proclamation is Quarles, Negro in the American
Revolution, 1932, but also see Carey, These Black Rascals ; Holton, Forced Founders, 133163; John E. Selby, Dunmore (Williamsburg, 1977), 3644.
21. Archibald Campbell to George Germain, January 16, 1776, Germain Papers, vol.
4, Clements Library; OShaughnessy, Empire Divided, 151153 (Jamaican rebellion),
152 (for newspaper and Deane); Frey, Water from the Rock, 69 (Campbell), 71 (Deane),
7172 (Jamaican rebellion).
22. General Howes Proclamations, August 23, 1776 and November 30, 1776, 30/
55/37, ff. 254 and 334, Public Record Ofce, Kew, England, as cited in Ellen Gibson
Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), 29. For more on the situation in New York,
see Graham Russell Hodges, Black Revolt in New York City and the Neutral Zone:
177583, in Paul A. Gilje and William Pencak, eds., New York in the Age of the Constitution, 17751780 (Cranbury, N.J., 1992), 2047; Hodges, Root and Branch, 139161.
The later Clinton reference comes from the Kings American Department Orderly Book,
Orderly Book Collection, Clements Library (courtesy of Christopher Brown); also see
Alexander Innes to Sir Henry Clinton, November 9, 1779, in Alfred E. Jones, ed., A

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Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

Letter Regarding the Queens Rangers, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 30
(1922): 368372; William Cobbett and T. C. Hansard, eds., The Parliamentary History
of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols. (London, 18061820),
19:694n., 698, as cited in Frey, Water from the Rock, 76 (Burke), 113114 (Clinton
proclamation), 119 (Clintons reversal), 164 (Cornwallis directive); Quarles, Negro in
the American Revolution, 113114 (Clinton proclamation), 140141 (Cornwallis directive). For a letter that may have helped Clinton shift strategy, see Randall M. Miller, ed.,
A Backcountry Loyalist Plan to Retake Georgia and the Carolinas, 1778, South Carolina Historical Magazine 75 (1974): 207214.
23. Murphy Stiel to General Henry Clinton, August 16, 1781, Clinton Papers, vol.
170, no. 27, Clements Library. See also Hodges, Root and Branch, 160 and Todd W.
Braisted, The Black Pioneers and Others: The Military Role of Black Loyalists in the
American War for Independence, in John W. Pulis, ed., Moving On: Black Loyalists in
the Afro-Atlantic World (New York, 1999), 337, esp. 17.
24. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 148151; Frey, Water from the
Rock, 9798, 100102, 137140; Dennis M. Conrad et al., eds., The Papers of General
Nathanael Greene, vols. 8 (Chapel Hill, 1995), 294; 9 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 650651; 10
(Chapel Hill, 1998), 19; 11 (Chapel Hill, 2000), 6466. The most interesting documents
are John Crudens sketch Embodying Ten Thousand Black Troops in the Province of
South Carolina, January 5, 1782, CO 5/175 ff. 411413 and Dunmore to Clinton,
February 2, 1782, CO 5/175 ff. 407410, 415417, PRO; both are reproduced in
George Livermore, An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of
the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers (Boston, 1862), 182189.
25. Unknown to John Adams, June 9, 1775, in Robert J. Taylor et al., eds., Papers of
John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 3:1820; Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 1517 (Gates, council of war, and NJ committee); Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant
to Adams, August 13, 1776 and Adams to Sergeant, August 17, 1776, in Taylor et al.,
Adams Papers, 4:453455, 469.
26. Antibiastes, Observations on the Slaves, and Indented Servants in the Army, and
in the Navy of the United States (Philadelphia, 1777); Thomas Kench proposal, Revolutionary Rolls, CXCIX, no. 80, Mass. Arch., as cited in Quarles, Negro in the American
Revolution, 5455, and reproduced in Livermore, An Historical Research, 160161;
Paul F. Dearden, The Rhode Island Campaign of 1778: Inauspicious Dawn of Alliance
(Providence, 1980), xiii; Louis Wilson, Rhode Islands First Rhode Island Regiment
The Black Regiment 17771780 (unpublished paper); thanks to Ronald Hoffman for
providing a copy of the Charles Carroll letter of June 4, 1781, and accompanying documentation, which essentially conrms Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 56
57.
27. The best studies of this subject are Gregory D. Massey, The Limits of Antislavery
Thought in the Revolutionary Lower South: John Laurens and Henry Laurens, Journal
of Southern History 63 (1997): 495530 (quotations on 512513); Conrad et al.,
Nathanael Greene Papers, 10:22, 74, 228229, 304, 472, 506508, 11:35, 115, 307
309, 504.
28. Richard B. Sheridan, The Jamaican Slave Insurrection Scare of 1776 and the

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207

American Revolution, Journal of Negro History 61 (1976): 290309; OShaughnessy,

Empire Divided, 175.
29. Petition of William Henry Ricketts to the Assembly of Jamaica, October 30, 1778,
CO 140/60, and companion memorials of 1780 and 1782, PRO; John D. Garrigus,
Catalyst or Catastrophe? Saint-Domingues Free Men of Color and the Battle of Savannah, 17791782, Revista/Review Interamericana 22 (SpringSummer 1992): 109
125; The Siege of Savannah in 1779 as Described in Two Contemporaneous Journals of
French Ofcers in the Fleet of Count DEstaing (Albany, N.Y., 1874), 20, 39, 40, 59;
Benjamin Kennedy, ed. and trans., Muskets, Cannon Balls and Bombs: Nine Narratives
of the Siege of Savannah in 1779 (Savannah, 1974), 52 (quotation); Alexander Lawrence,
Storm Over Savannah: The Story of Count dEstaing and the Siege of the Town in 1779
(Athens, 1951); George P. Clark, The Role of the Haitian Volunteers at Savannah in
1779: An Attempt at an Objective View, Phylon 41 (1980): 356366.
30. Fuller to Germain, December 2324, 1778, Fuller MSS 256 ff. 110, 113, 133,
Nicholas M. Williams Ethnological Collection, Boston College; OShaughnessy, Empire
Divided, 177, 181.
31. OShaughnessy, Empire Divided, 178179, 180181 (quotation); Annual Register, 1781, 112113, as cited in George F. Tyson Jr., The Carolina Black Corps: Legacy of
Revolution (17821798), Revista/Review Interamericana 5 (Winter 1976): 652.
32. Paul E. Kopperman, The British Army in North America and the West Indies,
1755/83: A Medical Perspective, in Geoffrey Hudson, ed., War, Medicine and Britain,
16001815 (London, forthcoming); Sylvia Frey, The British Soldier in America (Austin,
Tex., 1981), 37; David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 17931798 (Oxford, 1982), 363; John Hunter, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, and on the Best Means of Preserving the
Health of Europeans in That Climate (1788; reprint, London, 1808), 11, 37, 47, 58, 60;
Andrew OShaughnessy, Redcoats and Slaves in the British Caribbean, in Robert L.
Paquette and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European
Expansion (Gainesville, 1996), 105127; Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army in
the West Indies: Society and the Military in the Revolutionary Age (Gainesville, 1998),
60, 104, 210, 218, 219, 229, 237.
33. Hunter, Observations on the Diseases of the Army, 20, 270273; Thomas Dancer,
M.D., The Medical Assistant, or Jamaica Practice of Physic. Designed Chiey for the Use
of Families and Plantations (St. Jago De La Vega, 1809), 180.
34. OShaughnessy, Empire Divided, 179181; Robertson, Spanish Town Papers,
137 (see also 138140 for accounts of free blacks who were probably enslaved). See also
Alan G. Jamieson, American Privateers in the Leeward Islands, 17761778, American
Neptune 43 (1983): 2030.
35. Michael J. Jarvis, Maritime Masters and Seafaring Slaves in Bermuda, 1680
1783, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59 (2002): 585586.
36. Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford, 2000), 189; Germain to Campbell, 7 September, 1781, CO 137/80 f. 290, PRO.
Stephen Conway has mentioned to us that various offers to raise Catholics in the American War exist; see also Arhele Margon, A Weapon of War Yet Untried: Irish Catholics

208

Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy

and the Armed Forces of the Crown, 17601830, in T. G. Fraser and Keith Jeffrey, eds.,
Men, Women and War (Dublin, 1993), 6685.
37. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 73; the British gures are compiled
from previously cited material, for the most part, and involve a fair amount of guesswork
and extrapolation.
38. Continental army and state militia numbers are reported in Robert Middlekauf,
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 17631789 (New York, 1982), 547, and
Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental
Army (New York, 1996), 8285. The numbers concerning British mobilization, which
include army, navy, and home militia, are from Conway, British Isles, 1144, esp. 2829;
see also his earlier British Mobilization in the War of American Independence, Bulletin
of Historical Research 72:177 (1999): 5876. The numbers of Hessians come from
Rodney Atwood, The Hessians: Mercenaries from Hessen-Kassel in the American Revolution (Cambridge, U.K., 1980), 52, 153, 157, 233, 254257. Numbers of Loyalists are
from Paul Smith, The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organization and Numerical
Strength, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25 (1968): 259267. For the numbers
for July 1779, see Mackesy, War for America, 524525.
39. The standard account of the West India regiments is Roger Norman Buckley,
Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 17951815 (New Haven, 1979),
which can usefully be supplemented by Voelz, Slave and Soldier, 181212, 224, Buckley,
British Army in the West Indies, 117124, 137138, 186201, and Bryan Dyde, The
Empty Sleeve: The Story of the West India Regiments in the British Army (Antigua,
1997). Tyson, Carolina Black Corps, makes explicit the continuity between the American Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars.
40. The Brunswick Contingent in America, 17761783, Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography 15 (1891): 224; Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 174;
Frey, Water from the Rock, 226227; Michael Craton and Gail Saunders, Islanders in the
Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, vol. 1, From Aboriginal Times to the End of
Slavery (Athens, 1992), 170, 187, 200, 207; Wilson, Loyal Blacks, 3435, 81; James W.
St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and
Sierra Leone, 17831870 (New York, 1976), 6, 22, 192; Pulis, Moving On, esp. 5960,
123; Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 73, 99.
41. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 184, 198; Gary B. Nash, Race and
Revolution (Madison, 1990), 6364; Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of
James Forten (New York, 2002), 46; John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered:
Eyewitness Accounts of the War of Independence (Chicago, 1977), 2628.
42. Granville Sharp to his brother, January 14, 1792, Sharp Papers, Hardwicke Court,
as cited in Wilson, Loyal Blacks, 166; Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies, 3:194195, as
quoted in Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats, 34.

The Arming of Slaves in the Haitian Revolution

david geggus

The Haitian, or Saint Domingue, Revolution of 17891803 took place

in one of the largest and most productive slave societies of the eighteenth
century. The major supplier of sugar and coffee to the Atlantic market, Saint
Domingue was in 1791 home to about a half-million slaves, thirty thousand
whites, and a similar number of free people of color when it was transformed
by simultaneous uprisings among the slave and free colored populations.
Twelve years of internal strife and foreign invasion led to the ending of slavery
and, eventually, of French colonial rule. Although the conict brought more
than eighty thousand European troops to the colony, slaves and former slaves
constituted a large proportion of combatants on all sides. The extent to which
defenders of slavery armed slaves in the Haitian Revolution was without precedent in the Caribbean, and it had few counterparts in Latin American history until the military manumissions of the nineteenth century. It was both the
product of unique circumstances and a continuation of trends long under way
in Americas plantation societies.

Prerevolutionary Developments
The arming of slaves in the American tropics was a response to the small
size of white populations, the vulnerability of European troops to the disease
environment, and their poor performance in thickly forested and mountainous
209

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David Geggus

terrain. As long as conicts in the region primarily pitted European soldiers

from different countries against each other, and as long as warfare centered
on seaborne landings, pitched battles, and sieges of towns, interest in forming
a black military remained limited. It was presumably restrained by the security risk and encroachment on private property that such measures involved,
and by differences between African and European styles of warfare. When regimes faced an enemy drawn from the majority black population, however,
which enjoyed signicant immunity to local diseases and proved adept at
ghting in jungles and mountains, the advantages in arming black slaves
greatly increased.
By the eighteenth century, colonizers of all national backgrounds in the
Caribbean and Latin America were familiar with black soldiery, but those
soldiers generally were drawn from the free population. Nonwhite militias
grew rapidly in size during the century, and the later large-scale use of slave
soldiers doubtless owed something to this precedent. By the time of the Haitian Revolution, free men of color made up about half of the militia in Saint
Domingue. To assuage white colonists unease with this development, the
administration imposed white ofcers on free black and mulatto units after
the 1760s, which was typical of the British but not the Iberian and Dutch
colonies. Another relevant and more controversial trend was the increasing
tendency of colonial regimes to come to terms with certain indomitable maroon communities by recognizing them as free and enlisting them as bounty
hunters against fugitive slaves and as potential defenders against foreign enemies. Panama (1579), Mexico (1609), New Granada (1686), Jamaica (1739,
1740), and Surinam (1760, 1762, 1767) provide the best-known cases. In
1784 the French and Spanish administrations that shared Hispaniola also
signed such a treaty, with the Maniel maroons of southeastern Santo Domingo. This proved extremely unpopular among French colonists and was not
ratied by the French government. Nonetheless, such treaty maroons, like
the nonwhite militias, generally became effective defenders of the slaveholding
regimes. Despite creating alarm, their example thus presumably reduced resistance to the arming of slaves.
As Peter Voelzs encyclopedic study shows, the use of black slaves as soldiers
in the Americas began with the conquest itself and was remarkably widespread and varied, but it tended to be sporadic and temporary. When slaves
were drafted, it was usually during wartime emergencies or for overseas expeditions. They most often served as support personnel, building defenses, foraging, and carrying baggage, although Pernambuco in the 1640s and early
South Carolina provide important exceptions. If slaves were armed, it was not
usually with rearms. (For those who routinely worked with machetes, the

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211

change thus did not have the implications of distributing knives in a state
penitentiary.) And when their service was over, it seems the great majority
returned to their former labors. A signicant development for the Caribbean
came in the Jamaican Maroon War of the 1730s with the formation of units of
Condential Black Shot. These were homogeneous combat units that seem
to have enjoyed some longevity. The three hundred Black Rangers raised in
Surinam in 1772 represented a further advance in that they were recruited
with promises of freedom and the corps became permanent. Both of these
corps were explicit responses to the difculties of ghting maroons in tropical
forest environments. The formation of slave corps by the British during the
American Revolution evinced perhaps a different type of motivation: the desire to undermine (economically and psychologically) a slaveowning enemy.
Given the numbers involved and the survival of at least the Carolina Corps,
transferred in 1783 to the West Indies, they constitute another step forward in
the developing use of slaves as soldiers.
The French Caribbean saw nothing quite so dramatic but nonetheless witnessed similar developments in the military use of slaves. From at least the late
seventeenth century, bodies of slaves sometimes were armed in defense of their
colonies, and some participated in overseas expeditions. At rst, only individuals of exceptional valor gained their freedom, but during the Seven Years
War a group of sixty slave defenders on Guadeloupe were manumitted (on
condition that they leave the island), as was another group on Martinique. In
Saint Domingue, whose slave population grew rapidly while its military garrison did not, the government sought to boost recruitment to the free colored
mounted police (marchausse) and to two short-lived free colored battalions during the American Revolutionary War by offering tax-free manumissions to the few masters who would provide slaves to serve for their freedom
in these units. After the war, the colonial ministry apparently discussed plans
for using black soldiers, but a proposal in 1789 to emancipate slaves in return
for only six years marchausse service was decried as dangerous by the local
administration.
Armed blacks were therefore an increasing presence in eighteenth-century
colonies, and a sporadic tendency toward arming slaves was discernible. Such
developments remained rare, however, and for colonists and administrators,
highly controversial. In Saint Domingue, the presence of a relatively large
free colored population perhaps reduced the incentive to arm slaves. Not
only did the colony that produced the Americas greatest slave insurrection
have a very limited prior history of violent rebellion, but its extensive use
of slave soldiers to combat that insurrection also had little local precedent
to follow.

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The Haitian Revolution

The rst two years of the Saint Domingue Revolution that began in 1789
consisted largely of white factions competing with one another and with the
free population of color. Although some scholars have recently claimed that
both sides armed slaves from early in the conict, it was not until the great
slave uprising of August 1791 in the colonys northern plain and the simultaneous uprising of free people of color in western and southern Saint Domingue
that the phenomenon rst really emerges. The arming of slaves by free persons
postdated the slave revolution and was in no sense a cause of it.
During the two years following the uprising, as the slave revolution spread
and the free coloreds achieved rapid victory in their struggle for racial equality,
the military use of slaves developed in a number of formats. Four types might
be identied: plantation guards, irregular corps raised by colonists, alliances
with insurgents, and formal corps formed by states.
PLANTATION GUARDS

The performance of guard duty by slaves on their own estates represented the most basic type of militarization. It might involve the distribution of
rearms to a select few, the improvisation of lances, or merely the carrying of
machetes and axes. Information is sparse about the identity of guards, but
slave drivers and artisans were evidently involved and presumably so were
slaves who already carried weapons, such as hunters and watchmen. The
phenomenon was found in all parts of the colony after 1791 and lasted as long
as slavery survived. Protection of plantations usually involved joint operations
in which slaves cooperated with white employees and owners; where whites
had abandoned the countryside, it was sometimes initiated and perpetuated
by the slaves themselves.
The rst signs of this perhaps surprising behavior were seen in the early days
of the slave insurrection in the northern plain, when some workforces, headed
by conservative drivers, tried to ght off incursions by the insurgents. Resembling village headmen caught up in twentieth-century guerrilla conicts, such
slave drivers became prime targets for assassination. The revolt in the north
proved so devastating that within weeks little remained to defend in much of
the plain, but on a few abandoned estates close to the city of Cap Franais
groups of sixty or more male slaves remained through the insurrection as
autonomous armed guards resisting attacks, capturing insurgents, and putting
out res. Some were freed by the Colonial Assembly in 1792.
Armed guards, protecting estates, were far more typical of plantations in the
northwest region and west and south provinces of Saint Domingue, where

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213

slave rebellion developed more slowly and on a smaller scale amid a civil war
fought between different white factions and free people of color. Although
work regimes progressively broke down in these areas, most estates were still
substantially intact when slavery was abolished in August 1793, and in much
of the region slavery would be maintained by British invaders until 1798. In
the wake of the uprising in the north, planters and estate managers in the Cul
de Sac plain behind Port au Prince armed slaves whom they trusted at the same
time as they established night patrols and added extra white guards, if they
could nd men willing to reside in the plain. Nearly seven years later, in the
last days of the doomed British occupation, some enslaved men continued to
shoulder muskets alongside white plantation staff, while the black republican
army liberated the last slaves in the colony.
On the absentee-owned Marin plantation, slaves in 1791 and 1792 spontaneously took on the role of defenders. They limited damage to the estate by
raiders, made the plantation attorney leave for town at a dangerous moment,
and hid in the canes and reedbeds to avoid forced recruitment in a conict they
evidently did not see as their own. Ten years later, 92 of the 155 original slaves
were still there, and supposedly no more than 10 had joined the insurgents. In
the attorneys words, they were attached to a soil they saw as belonging to
them. They told him they were preventing pillage of the plantation, the big
house, and our chickens and pigs. Since the slaves were rather less zealous
about maintaining the production of sugar, it seems they identied with the
plantation as the site of their provision grounds and proto-peasant activity.
Their behavior bears comparison with that of workforces before the revolution who sometimes would capture or go in pursuit of fugitive slaves, in part
because they threatened their provision grounds. That insurgents sometimes
sought to burn slave quarters as a recruitment tactic sheds further light on
slaves interest in being plantation guards. As elsewhere, the role of the driver
was central; the Marin slave driver dictated letters to the owner in France
throughout the revolution.
Further insight into slaves willingness to defend the plantations on which
they lived comes from Bernard Fouberts massive study of the Laborde plantations in the southern plain of Les Cayes. When local free nonwhites rebelled
late in 1791, they recruited plantation slaves, supposedly promising them
freedom, and terrorized workforces that did not join them by burning slave
quarters and killing slave drivers. Most of those who left to join, rst, the free
coloreds and, later, independent slave rebels, were recently arrived Africans,
young men without local roots. The armed guards who served alongside
whites were drawn from the plantations creole (that is, locally born) elite,
generally married men with families, those who might most reasonably expect

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manumission for their loyalty. Once again, slave drivers proved to be key gures. In the south, as in the north, however, the leaders of the slave insurgents
were frequently also creole slave drivers. In fact, a wider study of western and
southern plantations shows that, although young Africans and eld slaves
proportionately were most likely to become insurgents, slave drivers were
almost equally represented among those who rebelled and those who remained on their plantations. Social structure thus helps explain behavior during the revolution, but only up to a certain point.
IRREGULAR CORPS

The Swiss. Les Suisses were the rst corps of armed slaves raised in
the revolution. They were used as auxiliaries during the period September
October 1791 by the free colored insurgents in the Port au Prince region, who
demanded an end to racial discrimination but not to slavery. The origins of the
Swiss have long been controversial. White contemporaries claimed that the
free coloreds recruited them on white colonists plantations with promises of
freedom or at least a reduced work schedule. The free coloreds and their subsequent defenders offered two alternative versions. One is that white colonists
rst mobilized slaves, especially their own domestics, but that these slaves
deserted to the free coloreds when the latter decisively repulsed the white
forces that marched against them. The other version holds that the Swiss consisted of existing fugitives, rebels who had burned plantations in the mountains, and others who spontaneously abandoned their estates to join the victorious free colored army. All three versions were self-serving but have some
grounding in fact. The number of Swiss uctuated between two hundred and
about two thousand but was generally between three hundred and six hundred. The initial group formed at the end of August in the mountains above
Port au Prince and then was swollen by massive desertions from lowland sugar
estates following the battle of Pernier, fought a few days later at the edge of the
Cul de Sac plain. The free colored leaders persuaded most of these slaves to
return to their plantations, but they kept and armed several hundred and
drilled them daily. For a very tense two months, the free colored army then
negotiated with the whites controlling the capital city the issues of racial
equality and what was to be done with the slaves in arms.
The Swiss were valuable to the free coloreds for political rather than military reasons. The several thousand freemen of color enjoyed a considerable
edge as soldiers over their white opponents. Their black auxiliaries served as
an unstated threat that, if the whites did not grant racial equality, the free
nonwhites might raise the slaves en masse. The free coloreds ability to control
the countryside in the south and west provinces, where they were most nu-

The Haitian Revolution

215

merous, is the main, though little understood, reason those regions did not
experience a slave uprising like that in the north. In their negotiations with
their opponents, the free nonwhite leaders represented the Swiss as a threat to
the propertied classes with whom the free coloreds, as essential intermediaries,
were diplomatically struggling to deal.
The question of the Swiss brought into conict the class interests and racial
sensibilities of the free coloreds, and it is especially interesting, because it casts
a spotlight on free coloreds attitudes toward slavery at a moment when the
balance of power between whites, blacks, and coloreds was about to careen
out of control. Because of its tragic ending, the story has become emblematic
of the relations between slaves and freemen and between their respective descendants in independent Haiti.
With the slave revolution raging in the north, a few free coloreds in the west
suggested that a controlled and compensated end to slavery might be a prudent policy. Many more favored emancipating several hundred of the Swiss.
Apart from considerations of justice, they saw that ingratitude to their allies
might poison future relations between slaves and free people of color, precisely
what their white opponents hoped to achieve. But slaves who had borne arms
in rebellion were usually executed. White planters in the plain of Cul de Sac
proved willing to compromise and adopted a proposal to free the Swiss after
eight years service in the rural police, a prerevolutionary manumission procedure. These planters, who reluctantly accepted the free coloreds as essential
allies in preserving slavery, thought driving the Swiss back into slavery would
be too dangerous. Yet the urban radicals of Port au Prince wanted to punish
the black soldiers and insisted that rewarding them would encourage further
rebellion. A stalemate ensued.
On September 22 the free colored leader, Bauvais, reported that angry Swiss
being returned to their owners had rioted in his camp and nearly killed a white
colonist; he had opened re on them, but some had ed with their weapons.
He asked Port au Prince urgently to send eld cannon and guns. Probably
suspecting a ruse, the whites did nothing. Meanwhile, the free coloreds divided violently for and against their auxiliary troops. The younger men tended
to take their side, whereas the most senior gures favored acquiescing to white
demands. At stake was the free coloreds moral authority to speak for all the
colonys nonwhites.
Matters came to a head when a treaty was signed in late October ending
racial discrimination. The free colored army triumphantly marched into Port
au Prince, accompanied by more than two hundred Swiss. They were variously described as the most alert or the guiltiest of the slaves, mainly artisans
and slave drivers. About a tenth were of mixed racial descent. Impudently, a

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David Geggus

contemporary wrote, the Swiss walked the streets with the assurance of free
men. But the triumph was short-lived. White politicians denounced a dangerous excitement among urban slave artisans and domestics caused by the
presence of the armed blacks, who reportedly told them, If you had done like
us, the country would be ours! According to a colonist, who called the Swiss
tigers: Every good citizen was seized with panic; each feared for his property and his life. Some suggested that the black soldiers be sold in South
America or thrown into the sea.
The free colored leaders, anxious to preserve their own political gains, nally bowed before white pressure and accepted a plan to deport the Swiss and
settle them on the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. Although the free nonwhite
poor demonstrated in their support, about 215 Swiss were forced at gunpoint
onto a ship and put in chains. Then began an odyssey that few of them would
survive. After the ships captain tried to sell the men to the lumberjacks of
Belize, they were abandoned on a desert island, shipped to Jamaica and then
back to Saint Domingue, to the remote port of Mle Saint Nicolas. There
many were murdered by white paramilitary rufans, and the rest spent a year
chained in a ships hold. A handful, at most, eventually returned to Port au
Prince.
The Swiss were unfortunate pioneers. Just as slaveowners in the north province vehemently refused any meaningful negotiation with the slaves in insurrection, those in the west were not ready to accept a corps of armed slaves
associated with rebellion. Times were changing, however. The free coloreds
successful control of the Swiss encouraged others to experiment further with
using slave auxiliaries. There was no shortage of slaves willing to seize the
opportunity. On the other hand, the messages the most militant of them must
have drawn from the story of the Swiss were that collaboration would bring
betrayal and that slaves had to ght for themselves. Local rebellions began to
multiply in the south and west provinces.
The Company of Africans. Having driven a wedge between free coloreds
and slaves, the Port au Prince radicals (who included seamen, shopkeepers,
artisans, and some merchants) soon renewed their ght against the free coloreds. Appreciating their need for black troops, the radicals made an unsuccessful and bizarre request to the governor of Jamaica to send them Blue
Mountain Maroons, and in December 1791 or a little later they raised a new
corps among the urban slaves of Port au Prince. The corps was known as the
Compagnie des Africains and probably consisted of unemployed waterfront
workers. Confusingly, they were sometimes called Swiss. (Just as the term
Suisse had the generic meaning of guard, Africains acquired at this time the
connotation of black corps.) The men, who were not freed, carried sabers or

The Haitian Revolution

217

the wooden clubs favored by slaves for stick-ghting. The corps had a white
commander, Breton de la Villandry (an estate attorney), and another leader
called Philibert or Caman, who was a young black slave owned by a merchant. The person responsible for forming the unit was the radical leader and
millionaire planter Jean-Baptiste de Caradeux, who had already armed slaves
on his plantations against his enemies in the surrounding plain. In 1793 the
unit grew to be twelve hundred strong.
The Africains conducted night raids into the Cul de Sac plain and were paid
a bounty for the heads of mulattoes that they brought back. This grisly ritual
perhaps reects the inuence of Jean-Baptiste de Caradeux, who had a penchant for decapitation, and also of African religious beliefs concerning protection against the vengeance of the deceased, but in any event, headhunting
would be widely practiced in the revolution, by European as well as local
soldiers. In March 1792 the corps formed part of an expedition of troops and
urban whites that traversed the plain pillaging plantations, forcibly recruiting
slaves, and stealing the slaves pigs and chickens. This set off a massive uprising in which thousands of crudely armed rural slaves joined the free coloreds
in driving the Port au Prince army back to the capital. The expeditions losses
were heavy but would have been greater had not the African Company fought
so well and had its spies not learned of the attack in advance. Out of this
conict a new black corps was formed.
Hyacinthes Gendarmerie. After unleashing the power of the slaves, the free
coloreds, as men of property, now wished to get the insurgents back to work
on the estates. They also needed a counterweight to the Company of Africans
and assistance in facing down new autonomous bands of slaves that were appearing in the plain and the surrounding mountains. With their white planter
allies, they therefore formed a mounted police force of forty gendarmes, which
grew to one hundred, whose members were promised their freedom. It was
headed by a young vodou priest named Hyacinthe from the Ducoudray sugar
estate, who was probably a household domestic. He had led the Cul de Sac
slaves headlong attack on the Port au Prince expedition waving a bulls tail
and crying out that the soldiers bullets were water. Estimates of the slaves
casualties ranged between ve hundred and three thousand killed, so his inuence over his followers was clearly considerable.
Probably because of his religious role, Hyacinthe achieved a notable ascendancy over the slave drivers of the plain, and with uneven success he helped
reestablish sugar production with a reduced workweek. This required a good
deal of violence and some bribery on the part of plantation managers. When
one workforce refused to cut cane and opened re on his men, Hyacinthe
charged at them impetuously and killed ten. Later in the year, he administered

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David Geggus

one hundred lashes to a slave accused of theft. Yet according to plantation

attorney Charles Malenfant, Hyacinthe kept the respect of the Cul de Sac
slaves. When one of his gendarmes was arrested in Port au Prince, he was able
to mobilize several thousand plantation workers to march on the capital to get
him released. In February 1793 he marched into the camp of the rebel leader
Mamzelle and hanged several of his men in reprisal for their recent attack on
the free coloreds. He was reputedly paid nearly a thousand livres coloniales
(about US$120) per month.
Hyacinthe is a difcult gure to assess. A political player in his own right, he
maneuvered through the tortuous politics of the unfolding revolution with
much sleight of hand, playing one faction against another. Yet it seems that, as
the free coloreds moved closer to the urban radicals after the abolition of racial
discrimination, Hyacinthes primary alliance remained with the conservative
white planters of the plain. Their leader, Hanus de Jumcourt, was reputedly
initiated into vodou and known to slaves as the white who knows everything. Like the planters, Hyacinthe irted with the Spanish of neighboring
Santo Domingo after the French Republic went to war in the spring of 1793,
and like them he allied with the British when the latter occupied Port au Prince
in June 1794. He was assassinated shortly afterwards in the camp of an independent black leader when making overtures on behalf of the British-planter
alliance.
Jean Kinas Corps. As the civil war between whites and free coloreds spread
into Saint Domingues south province in late 1791, so did the use of armed
slaves by both parties and autonomous rebellions by the slaves themselves.
The central part of the south peninsula soon became a free colored stronghold
and remained so for the rest of the decade, but in the southeastern frontier
district of Saltrou the slaves of white planters defended their estates against the
free coloreds for two years, and in the Grande Anse at the western end of the
peninsula both slavery and a white supremacist regime remained largely intact
until 1798. At the beginning of the conict, the free men of color incorporated
their own slaves into their armies and raiding parties, but little is known of
their organization. In response to their attacks, planters in the Cayemittes
district of the Grande Anse in early December 1791 became the rst whites to
arm their slaves. Their counterparts in the plain of Les Cayes, on the south
coast, briey armed 10 percent of their slaves the same month and later attached to their camp a body of armed slaves led by an African named Couacou. The Colonial Assembly had by then already ordered the manumission of
several of these slave defenders in the southeast and southwest and sent details
of their proceedings to the National Assembly in France. As libertarian ideology gained ground, such defenders had a propaganda value for slaveowners as
well as a military one.

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219

Easily the best known was Jean Kina. He was a slave craftsman from a
cotton plantation in the parish of Tiburon, the front line of the Grande Anse.
Still one of the most isolated places in Haiti and far from any town, Tiburon
was a district of small estates with resident owners and relatively high ratios of
whites to nonwhites and free persons to slaves. Along this exposed coast,
planters had customarily armed their slaves in wartime. These brave colonists, wrote an observer in 1788, are almost all artillerymen and their slaves
are soldiers . . . experience shows that till now this has produced nothing but
good effects. It was in this region that there appeared, when the French
Revolution shook Saint Domingue, the planters ideal bon ngre, a fearless
defender of royalty, slavery, and white supremacy.
Jean Kina rst emerges from the anonymity of the plantation at the beginning of 1792 maneuvering through mountain forests of the Grande Anse
commanding a group of sixty slaves. In newspapers and memoirs, colonists
praised him extravagantly for his cool head, bravery, and military sense, and
for his devotion to the cause of the white planter class. Apart from his martial
skills, he made the slaves work, and he had a certain symbolic value as well.
This negro, one of them wrote, is absolutely feared by all the brigands and
non-brigands, mulattoes and slaves; they tremble at his appearance. A man
of erce temper, he appears to have shared in the mentality, found among
whites and slaves, that classed the free coloreds as objects of envy but not
respectparadoxically, for Kina was now ofcially a freedman himself. He
was manumitted rst by the Tiburon commune, with his masters consent, and
then by the governor and the Colonial Assembly. Yet for at least a year he
made a show of refusing this change of status; this was to set an example for
his fellow slaves, he said. In July 1792 the Colonial Assembly awarded him a
medal and a small pension. Slave or free, he was determined to live well.
Within a year, his familys food bill, paid at public expense, had to be cut back
to 50 livres (about $60) per month.
The size of Jean Kinas corps soon grew to consist of a nucleus of 170 slaves,
probably Africans, who by mid1793 also had gained their freedom. The
corps may have been reinforced on occasion with levies from the plantations
to reach as many as ve hundred. In January 1793 Kina took part in a successful attack on the rebel slave stronghold of les Platons, which in August had
heavily defeated an expedition led by the governor. This time, however, the
insurgents were driven from their mountain fastness, largely thanks to Jean
Kina. Although the attackers numbered more than nineteen hundred, including more than three hundred troops of the line, all agreed that it was his ragged
and barefoot troop that won the day. They were described months later by a
British captain as follows: [They have] a bush ghting warfare peculiar to
themselves. . . . Their appearance was . . . very grotesqueinstead of the drum

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and fe, they used the Banger and Coromantee ute, the musical instruments
of their native country. Some had rearms; others, bill hooks fastened to long
poles and plantation watchmens hangers, and were in general wretchedly
attired in their osnaburgh frocks.
Like Hyacinthe, Jean Kina joined the white planters in allying with the
British forces that occupied parts of western and southern Saint Domingue in
the period 179398. Conscious of their tenuous hold on the colony, successive
British commanders were careful to award Kina marks of respect. He was
made a colonel and received several swords, gifts of cash, a high collar, and a
portrait of George III. His men received British pay and uniforms. Several
more times the corps distinguished itself in combat. Once the British began to
raise full-scale regiments of chasseurs, however, its role was diminished. It also
changed in composition. To replace battle casualties, Kina had to recruit prisoners of war, usually republican free coloreds deported to Jamaica. In the
summer of 1796 he was allowed to tap a new source that anticipated by
several months the method that would be used by the British West India
Regiments. This was the purchase from slaveships of Africans accustomed to
a state of warfare in their own countries. In all, he seems to have bought
about forty. Their wages were paid to him, and no provision was made for
their eventual emancipation. The ex-slave was now a slaveowner on a large
scale, and his Chasseurs de Georges III became a curiously hybrid unit,
divided into one company of chasseurs and one company of free coloreds.
Because losses among the Africans to death and desertion were heavy, the
corps consisted mainly of freedmen at the end of the British occupation in
September 1798.
Kinas subsequent career reads like something from a picaresque novel. It
took him to Jamaica, England, and Martinique, where he led a bloodless
rebellion in defense of the rights of local free people of color. After a spell in
Newgate prison in London, he moved to France, where he was promptly jailed
again and put in the Fort de Joux (in a cell above that of Toussaint Louverture), from which he was eventually released to join the Napoleonic army
in Italy.
ALLIANCES WITH INSURGENTS

In the preceding cases, men were generally recruited from a state of

slavery, usually with a promise of eventual freedom. A different type of recruitment emerged in the rst half of 1793, when France went to war with Spain
and Britain, and the contest for Saint Domingue became more desperate. This
new type of recruitment involved appeals to groups of insurgent or maroon
slaves, people who had effectively already freed themselves. This was consider-

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ably more unpopular with slaveowners, who tended to regard it as rewarding

rebellion and involving alliance with men they perceived not merely as their
own property but as murderers, rapists, and agents of their ruin. The relations of power in such arrangements were also radically different. During the
spring of 1793 a contest developed between French republican ofcials in
Saint Domingue and the royalist Spanish administration in Santo Domingo to
win over the different bands of insurgents in revolt in the north and the west.
This development may have saved the slave revolution that, at the beginning
of the year, had been in full retreat before the nally united forces of whites
and free coloreds. The Spanish essentially won this contest when, in the
course of May and June 1793, they contracted an alliance with the armies of
the principal rebel leaders, Jean-Franois, Georges Biassou, and Toussaint
(soon to be called Louverture).
Since the beginning of the slave uprising in 1791, Spanish colonists and
soldiers in Santo Domingo had traded across the frontier with the insurgents,
and local ofcials applied Spains ofcial policy of neutrality in the conict
with a good deal of anti-French bias. It remains uncertain, however, whether
the administration itself actively favored the rebel slaves prior to the outbreak
of war (as many contemporaries and historians have alleged). Only when war
in Europe seemed certain did Madrid make the extraordinary decision to
recruit as auxiliary troops the men who had devastated Saint Domingues
northern plain eighteen months earlier. They were to be offered freedom for
themselves and their families, exemptions, favors and privileges, and land in
the French or Spanish part of the island or elsewhere.
Spains decision to restore slavery with an army of revolted slaves grew out
of long Hispanic traditions of arming blacks and encouraging the resettlement
of fugitive slaves. Even in the context of the international and local trends
sketched above, however, it represents a daring experiment. The decision reected the high stakes for which the colonial powers were playing, and on the
part of Spain, a desire to recover from the French what had been part of its
rst American colony. Intense conservative antipathy for the French Revolution and for the type of secular, individualist society exemplied by Saint
Domingue perhaps also formed part of the equation, along with the low moral
prole and nancial problems of the Godoy government, which had recently
come to power. Not least was the adroit diplomacy of the insurgents themselves, who from the start of the uprising had assiduously cultivated contacts
with the Spanish, presenting themselves as defenders of church and king.
The alliance was initially successful. By the early months of 1794, insurgent
leaders had occupied most of the northern half of Saint Domingue in the name
of the king of Spain. About ve thousand Spanish troops had been sent to the

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colony but, with the signicant exception of taking the city of Fort Dauphin,
they were mainly used to guard the frontier, and their heavy losses in fever
epidemics suggest the wisdom of this limitation on the use of European soldiers. The number of black auxiliaries recruited is impossible to ascertain, but
in mid1793 Jean-Franois claimed to command 6,647 men (6,522 slaves, 67
free mulattoes, and 58 free blacks). Biassou claimed a slightly smaller number
that included forces under Toussaint Louverture. Later estimates were usually
smaller; Jean-Franoiss army was estimated at 3,000 men in late 1794 and at
1,000 in February 1795, although the Spanish also supplied other insurgents.
The rank-and-le soldiers received no pay, and the Spanish were very slow in
supplying uniforms and very cautious in supplying weapons. To begin with,
the policy was relatively cheap; the rst four months cost about $40,000.
Eighteen months later, however, Jean-Franoiss army alone reputedly was
costing $12,000 per month; some said that Spanish ofcials pocketed half the
sum budgeted. The monthly salary of Jean-Franois and Biassou was xed at
$250 (and the former received a $100 supplement). Colonels, who were numerous, received $20 to $30, and captains $15.
The main problem for the Spanish was that they found they had little control
over their allies, who proved maddeningly independent. The Spanish had no
say in the organization of their tropas auxiliares, particularly in the distribution of ranks. Jean-Franois called himself Grand Admiral; Biassou adopted
various titles. The black soldiers seemed to ght among themselves almost as
much as against the French. Appreciating how much the Spanish depended on
them, they needed to be cajoled, attered, and bribed. Biassou established
himself in a Spanish frontier town and called himself its governor, running up
large bills for food and drink. In the tradition of Spanish missionizing, priests
were used as key intermediaries. This aggravated Spanish military ofcers,
who complained that they were ghting a war of Pater Noster and Ave
Maria. The archbishop of Santo Domingo complained that the military were
disdainful of their black allies and ignored their requests. In return, black
ofcers sometimes demanded precedence over Spanish counterparts or refused
to obey local commanders. The inability of the Spanish to control the situation
became spectacularly evident in July 1794, when Jean Franoiss men massacred in one day about seven hundred French colonists under the eyes of an
immobile Spanish garrison in the town of Fort Dauphin.
In the spring of 1794 the general Toussaint Louverture switched allegiance
from Spain to the French Republic, so ending any chance of Spanish success.
Historians have long disputed the degree to which Toussaints volte-face resulted from the French decision to abolish slavery (taken locally in August
1793 and ratied in Paris the following February). Certainly Toussaint was

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not the only ofcer in the tropas auxiliares to feel conicted in ghting to
restore slavery once the French had abolished it. He was not the rst to switch
sides. Yet one cannot conclude that emancipation introduced a fatal aw into
Spanish policy, since the major black leaders remained loyal to Spain and
continued to sell black captives. And Toussaints motives were undoubtedly
complex.
This continued loyalty of the majority of the auxiliaries presented Spanish
ofcials with a dilemma when Spain abandoned its oldest colony in 1795 and
surrendered Santo Domingo to France. What should be done with the auxiliary troops? Many of the soldiers, and the French, thought it would be dangerous for them to remain on the island. They would not, however, be welcome in another slave society. Turned away from Cuba and Trinidad, an
irreducible group of about 650, including family members, was nally distributed among several destinations in Florida, Mexico, Central America, and
Spain. There they lived as pensioned exiles, very assertive of their rights as
former soldiers of the king.
FORMAL CORPS

La Lgion de lEgalit. Soon after the outbreak of war became known in

Saint Domingue in mid-April 1793, the republican commissioners there, Sonthonax and Polverel, formed the Legion of Equality. At rst, the nascent regiment acted as their personal bodyguard, and in the second half of the year it
became three separate corps stationed in each of the colonys provinces. The
commissioners had been sent from France to enforce racial equality in the
colony and to defeat the slave insurrection. In early 1793 they had come close
to doing so. This probably ran contrary to the aspirations of Sonthonax, who
had an abolitionist past. The Legion of Equality is therefore particularly interesting because of the way it served the radical commissioners as a stepping
stone to the dramatic abolition of slavery that they would announce at the end
of August. The legion was recruited by assembling at Port au Prince and
manumitting various bodies of slaves who already had been armed by the
colonists. Men who have been armed by their master and fought for him can
no longer be treated nor considered as slaves, they declared. After defending
his life and property, adopting his quarrels, and carrying out his vengeance,
they could not be returned to work as docile slaves. Any crimes committed by
the slave were the responsibility of the master. Sonthonax and Polverel thus
undermined their planter enemies and blamed them for this new breach in the
slave system.
In late 1792 Sonthonax, with the interim governor, Rochambeau, had already added armed slaves to some National Guard units and compagnies

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franches to ght insurgents. Now he combined a miscellany of small units

from around the west and south provinces. The commissioners exempted the
remnants of the Swiss at Cap Franais and the Africains at Port au Prince in
order to avoid accusations that they were encouraging slave rebellion. Those
men were declared free in mid-May and placed as crew on board two French
warships. Jean Kina and Hyacinthe also avoided drafting into the new corps,
which came to include 20 slaves from Grands Bois serving ve years for their
liberty in a local police force, 70 infantry and cavalry sent from the Artibonite
plain, 33 from the Cul de Sac, 108 Jacmel Hussars, and others who were
serving in military camps. They were to be freed immediately and serve under
the same conditions as line troops; ofcers and noncommissioned ofcers
would be transferred from European regiments. Slaves of mixed racial descent
were especially prominent in the corps. It had 366 men by mid-June and was
projected to have 1,200 men and 600 horses.
Faced with Spanish and British invasion and a coup by the colonial governor, the civil commissioners were soon forced to adopt more desperate measures. On June 20 they offered freedom to any insurgents in arms who would
defend the French Republic, and to expel the governor, they had to allow the
sack of the colonys main city, Cap Franais. Failing to control their new allies,
they modied their offer on July 2, specifying that it would apply only to those
who joined the new Legions of Equality. The offer was expanded to soldiers
and their families, but this was no more than the Spanish were already offering. More slaves were recruited in the south, and then, on August 29, Sonthonax declared the slave regime abolished. This was the beginning of the black
republican army that, after another decade of almost uninterrupted warfare,
would make Haiti independent in 1804. Because of the emancipation that
emerged from the military crisis of 1793, however, that army was henceforth
recruited not among slaves but among former slaves.
The British Chasseurs. Colonists were usually hostile to large formal corps,
which in their view corrupted slaves. To the extent that they accepted the
arming of slaves, colonists preferred to arm their own, to lead them into battle
and then back to work, as one put it. This was the Grande Anse model, at least
in idealized form. It is noteworthy, therefore, to nd the colonist who, in 1791,
had done the most to combat the northern insurgents advocating in August
1793 an ambitious new development. Lenoir de Rouvray, an eccentric conservative, proposed (to the Spanish) that all the colonial powers combine forces
and offer freedom to the rebel slaves. Those who accepted should be formed
by French ofcers into twelve regiments of one thousand men each, which,
when the war was over, would be deported to another colony. Although such a
scheme was never realized, the British, who were about to intervene in Saint

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Domingue, would expand the use of slave soldiery to its greatest extent in the
Haitian Revolution.
Under the British occupation of 179398, the military use of slaves continued in different formats, but the development of formal corps was the key
trend. After the capture of Port au Prince in June 1794, the British commander
negotiated with the insurgent leader Dieudonn, who led several thousand
men in the mountains above the city. Dieudonn agreed to serve under white
ofcers, if necessary, but insisted on freedom for all his men. Because the British governor was not empowered to dispose of planters property, he replied
that he would need royal permission to do so, and could offer only British pay
and freedom from vexation by former masters. The negotiations failed. Necessity soon overcame the scruples about private property, but the British had
only slightly more success in negotiating with members of Jean-Franoiss
army at the time of the Spanish withdrawal in 179597. It was in recruiting
corps among plantation slaves that the main developments occurred.
In the summer of 1794 the small British garrison was decimated by fever
epidemics, as its French and Spanish predecessors had been. To supplement
their dwindling numbers, local commanders (one British, one French colonial)
drafted several hundred slaves in the plains of Cul de Sac and the Artibonite,
where there were many abandoned plantations. Following a model already
used in some rural police units, the British promised the slaves freedom after
ve years service. In September the British position became more critical
following the revolt of their free colored allies, and in the ensuing ghting, the
black troops talent for a war of patrols and ambushes was particularly evident. In November 1794 a regiment of eight hundred chasseurs began recruiting in the Cul de Sac.
Most planters opposed this development. If you train them to arms, one
said of the slaves, to that pride, that equality, and familiarity necessary in the
military life, the entire colonial system is lost. Only colonists hoping to use
the chasseurs as instruments of vengeance against the free coloreds were said
to welcome the new corps. At rst recruiting was limited to slaves volunteered
by ruined or public-spirited planters and those taken from absentee or forfeited estates. Then in June 1795 a levy of one in fteen slaves was made
compulsory, and regiments were raised in all parts of the occupied zone. The
institution, strongly favored by military men, was thus able to prove itself
gradually. Londons refusal to allow manumission after ve years service was
simply ignored. Governor Adam Williamson suggested helpfully that perhaps
not many recruits would live that long, or they would want to reenlist.
By the end of 1796, the black corps in the British occupied zone numbered
about sixty-seven hundred men, of whom a little more than ve thousand

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were slaves. In July 1798 there were perhaps six thousand. All ofcers were
white, but freedmen could serve as sergeants and occasionally as sergeantmajors. The rank and le carried a musket and a machete, wore a red jacket
and a round hat, and received British pay and rations. Almost all the slaves
were Africans; owners and estate managers tended to pick their least wanted
workers or, later in the occupation, to purchase imported slaves to supply their
quota. By March 1796, however, it was said that half of the chasseurs were
former rebels who had changed sides, attracted by the terms of service.
Money, a full stomach, and a prestigious uniform: the attractions were, up
to a point, those that caused young males in any poor and oppressed group to
become soldiers. For eld slaves at the bottom of the plantation hierarchy,
men who worked half-naked six days a week and who prided themselves on
their Sunday dress, the appeal must have been especially great. The scarlet
tunic, moreover, was not just a amboyant item of clothing but, as JeanFranois said, lhabit du Roi. Each black corps had a chaplain who was instructed to end public prayers with three shouts of Vive le Roi! and each
service with God Save the King. Because most Africans came from monarchical societies, they would have found such rituals, decked out with the usual
trappings of ags, medals, and ceremonies, at least comprehensible and perhaps appealing. As for the regimentation, discipline, and ogging, these were
nothing new. Slaves adapted well to military life. In some units, an intense
esprit de corps seems to have evolved. Until the nal campaign of the occupation, desertion from the black corps was less than that among the white
troops. And during the nal campaign some chasseur units fought with a
suicidal bravery few colonists were willing to show.
During the British evacuation in 1798, thousands of chasseurs were refused
entry to Jamaica, and most were sent back to Saint Domingue, where they
were returned to plantation work by Toussaint Louverture, no longer soldiers
but no longer slaves.

Conclusion
As David Brion Davis underlined a quarter-century ago, opportunities
for slave emancipation opened up in both war and revolution, but particularly
in revolutionary wars. This chapter surveys four formats in which slaves were
armed during the Haitian Revolution that mark a trend toward an increase in
scale, formal organization, and offers of freedom in exchange for military
service. The rst two types of militarization, the use of plantation guards and
informal corps, emerged in the period 179192; alliances with slave insurgents and the formation of formal corps began in 1793. The outbreak of the

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war between France, Spain, and England in the spring of 1793 constituted,
then, a critical turning point in the use of slaves.
A change in the identity of armed slaves also occurred over time. Those
initially armed by slaveowners tended to be trusted members of the slave elite,
usually locally born, and (though the evidence is sparse) not infrequently of
mixed racial descent. Among the insurgent-allies and in most of the impersonally raised formal corps, Africans greatly predominatedan evolution that
would be matched in that of the British West Indian Regiments, which began
recruiting in 1795. In addition, the cases studied exhibit a wide variety in the
degree of autonomy these slave soldiers enjoyed, although it varied within as
much as between categories. Plantation guards might work side by side with
white personnel or have the run of abandoned estates. Of the heads of informal corps, Hyacinthe was more a political than a military leader, and clearly
more independent than Jean Kina, Caman, or the leaderless Swiss. Polar types
in this respect were the chasseurs, in which a slave could not even be a noncommissioned ofcer, and the Tropas Auxiliares de Carlos IV, which were
totally autonomous.
For enslaved men, the chief attractions of military service seem to have been
liberty, prestige, and material gain. Bearing arms brought immediate freedom
from plantation labor, and increasingly, the prospect of the status of freedman,
poignantly symbolized in the formal corps by the transition from bare feet to
shoes. Material rewards varied enormously between different types of organization and between leaders and followers. Jean Kina and Jean-Franoiss ofcers became men of considerable property, although they lost much of it
when forced to migrate. Uniforms were guaranteed only to the British chasseurs. The Spanish auxiliaries for a long time cut a very ragged appearance,
but their ofcers prized their uniforms, tted with extra gold braid, and some
still had them twenty years later.
The long-term consequences of enlistment varied greatly, too, between the
select few and the mass of soldiers. Escape from Saint Domingue proved
difcult for the Swiss, the British chasseurs, and most of the Spanish auxiliaries. Only a few hundred made new lives elsewhere. Some of the chasseurs sent
to Trinidad after being turned away from Jamaica were captured at sea by the
French and incorporated into the predominantly black army of Guadeloupe.
Some of the auxiliaries disbanded by the Spanish joined the British occupation
forces and fought against the republicans until 1798. Others preferred to live
in Santo Domingo, which they defended against Toussaint Louvertures invasion in 1801 and Dessaliness in 1805, thus preserving their military identity. The chasseurs and auxiliaries who remained in Saint Domingue were
probably forced back into plantation work, but not slavery. Because they had

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fought on the wrong side, their military service was not the springboard to
social mobility it was for those in the republican army. On the other hand,
they probably escaped enlistment in the bitterly destructive War of the South
(17991800) between Toussaint and Andr Rigaud and the apocalyptic War
of Independence (180203).
The arming of slaves was always controversial and generally opposed by
slaveowners when they did not personally control the process (rather like
manumission). Certain cases responded to political needs: the Swiss served the
free coloreds as a bargaining chip and threat; Kina had symbolic value for
proslavery ideologists. The arming of slaves, however, primarily resulted from
the slaveowners need to combat an enemy who was adapted to the Caribbean
disease environment, climate, and terrain. From the rst months of the slave
uprising, colonists crowded together in the towns or, performing military
service in the countryside, suffered escalating death rates from disease. By
1793 a yellow fever pandemic had taken hold in the Caribbean that would be
fed throughout the decade by the massive inux of nonimmune European
troops. French, British, and to a lesser extent Spanish regiments commonly
lost half of their complement in less than one year. Alternative military units
(white militia and troupes soldes; free colored militia and gendarmeries) also
had notable defects (indiscipline, desertion, expense, and poor health).
Black soldiers, too, fell sick, of course (12 percent of chasseurs were regularly hospitalized), but the contrast was very real. They proved themselves far
more resistant to fatigue than ineptly dressed white soldiers, and able to survive on much less. They marched long distances under a vertical sun and scaled
precipitous slopes at speed. In addition, they proved adept at tracking and at
ambushes in forested terrain. Their chief defect, the French and the British
found, was that they lacked the European soldiers training to stand bolt
upright when being shot at. They are not accustomed to our way of holding
rm when ghting, wrote commissioner Polverel to an irritated general, yet
do not think them bad soldiers; they dont fear death more than we do, and
soon will get used to our ways. It is not clear how much ghting styles
changed with regimentation, but evidence suggests that black soldiers in uniform continued to scatter to exploit terrain and to re in a prone position.
Although it has never been fully elucidated, the experience of the British in
Saint Domingue probably played a major role in preparing the way for the
twelve British West India Regiments launched in 1795 and perhaps also their
reliance on newly arrived Africans. How much the successful use of slave
soldiers in the Haitian Revolution more generally enhanced European opinions of blacks is uncertain. Admirers of black troops tended to dwell on biological factors and so emphasized racial difference. Tactical sense was ren-

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dered as cunning, bravery as boldness or indifference to life. Loyalty

and physical endurance were both military virtues and slavish qualities.
Armed slaves generally proved effective defenders of slavery. In the Haitian
Revolution, however, the policy of arming slaves probably ensured slaverys
destruction. Although it is possible that the slave revolution was unstoppable
by early 1793, it is also possible that the outbreak of war between the colonial
powers and their rush to acquire black allies rescued the insurgents from
defeat and drove the French to abolish slavery. Thereafter, the international
conict continued to remove young men from the plantations and promote the
formation of a black military that would defeat attempts to restore slavery and
nally would take the colony to independence.

Notes
1. Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial
Americas (New York, 1993), 13132, 13840, 18184; John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, ed. R. Price and
S. Price (Baltimore, 1988), lxxxv; Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two
Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, 1998), 230, 25758.
2. Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in the French West Indies (Lexington, 1966), chap.
4; Lucien Peytraud, Lesclavage aux Antilles franaises avant 1789: Daprs des documents indits des archives coloniales (Paris, 1897), 47980; Stewart R. King, Blue Coat
or Powdered Wig? Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Athens,
2001), 56; Centre des Archives dOutre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter CAOM), F3/
91, 1785 draft budget; CAOM, F3/150, letter of July 28, 1789. Slaves who served in the
Chasseurs Volontaires that went to Savannah were still awaiting manumission in 1789:
Jean Philippe Garran Coulon, Rapport sur les troubles de Saint-Domingue, 4 vols. (Paris,
179799), 2:8.
3. Finally, in August 1791, after ghting for nearly two years on one or another side
of free persons who claimed they were ghting for liberty, the slaves of the Plain du Nord
[sic] applied their ghting to their own cause: Franklin W. Knight, The Haitian Revolution, American Historical Review 105 (2000): 11112. A few persecuted colored landowners very briey fortied their plantations early in 1790, but these were ephemeral
incidents that took place in remote parts of the west province. The government certainly
did not arm three thousand slaves to crush the small free colored rebellion of October
1790, as stated in Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (New York,
1977), 67.
4. Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), Dxxv/78/772, document AA 148;
CAOM, F3/141, ff. 23132, 33841; Marc Favre, Le dbut de la rvolte de SaintDomingue dans la Plaine du Cap, Gnalogie et Histoire de la Carabe 48 (1993): 777,
782; AN, Dxxv/64/654, declaration of April 8, 1792; Samuel G. Perkins, On the Margin of VesuviusSketches of St. Domingo, 17851793 (Lawrence, 1995), 19; Moniteur Gnral de la Partie Franoise de Saint-Domingue 86 (1792). I am not including here

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the St. Michel estate adjoining Cap Franais, which was close by a military camp and
which remained largely intact until slavery ended: David Geggus, Une Famille de La
Rochelle et ses plantations de Saint-Domingue, in France in the New World, ed. D.
Buisseret (East Lansing, 1998), 11936.
5. Archives Dpartementales, Bouches-du-Rhone,

Marseille, 1Mi 34/26 (hereafter

Marin Papers), letters of October 8 and 28, 1791, March 31, and April 3, 1792, April 29,
1793; Archives Dpartementales, Vende, La Roche-sur-Yon, 1Mi 102/2, letter of September 2, 1791; David Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of
Saint Domingue, 17931798 (Oxford, 1982), 31014. On his frontline plantations in
the northwest, the merchant Franois Lavaud organized night patrols of one hundred
slaves. They promised to defend your property which is also ours. See AN, CC9A/8,
Lavaud to Lavaux.
6. Bernard Foubert, Les habitations Laborde Saint-Domingue dans la seconde
moiti du XVIIIe sicle (Lille, 1990), chap. 10; David Geggus, The Slaves of BritishOccupied Saint Domingue: An Analysis of the Workforces of 197 Absentee Plantations,
1796/97, Caribbean Studies 18 (1978): 3640.
7. David Geggus, The Swiss, and the Problem of Slave/Free Colored Cooperation, in Haitian Revolutionary Studies, ed. D. Geggus (Bloomington, 2002), 99118.
8. Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Caradeuc Papers, doc. 3/19.
9. Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Audiencia de Santo Domingo (hereafter AGI,
SD) 955, Garca to Bajamar, February 27, 1792; AN, Dxxv/78/773, anonymous letters,
October 27 and 31, 1791; Production historique des faits qui se sont passs dans la partie
de lOuest (Port au Prince, 1792), 1415.
10. See above, note 7.
11. CAOM, CC9A/5, letter to Pinchinat, November 9, 1791; AN, Dxxv/61/611,
letter by P. J. Raboteau, November 20, 1792 [1791]; Commission des Colonies, Dbats
entre les accusateurs et les accuss dans laffaire des colonies (Paris, 1795), 3:187, 7:206;
AN, Dxxv/46/439, Jumcourt to Pinchinat, October 13, 1791; Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Council Minutes, deposition by Flix Ouvire, March 14, 1793. On the magical properties attributed to wooden clubs, see David Geggus, Haitian Voodoo in the
Eighteenth Century: Language, Culture, Resistance, Jahrbuch fr Geschichte von Staat,
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 28 (1991): 3334.
12. Henri de Grimourd, LAmiral de Grimourd au Port-au-Prince (Paris, 1937), 67;
Thomas Madiou, Histoire dHati, 8 vols. (184748; Port au Prince, 1989), 1:129, 167,
171; David Geggus, The Caradeux and Colonial Memory, in The Impact of the Haitian
Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. D. Geggus (Columbia, 2001), 238; Stedman, Narrative, 638; Marin Papers, April 3, 1792; Charles Malenfant, Des colonies et particulirement de celle de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1814), 17. The corps also fought well as part of a
similar expedition one year later. Madiou evidently thought Caman and Philibert to be
the same person. Others have argued that Philibert was white or free colored. When the
free coloreds and radical whites made peace in mid1792, the unit was disbanded and its
members were sent back to their owners. Philibert, however, became head of the marchausse of the south coast city of Jacmel. He later returned to the capital, where he
repeatedly provoked conicts with free coloreds. The unit was reestablished in late 1792
and remained a tool of the radicals. See Beaubrun Ardouin, tudes sur lhistoire dHati,

The Haitian Revolution

231

11 vols. in 1, ed. Franois Dalencour (185360; Port au Prince, 1958), 1:58; Commission
des Colonies, Dbats, 7:206; A. Corre, Les papiers du Gnral A.-N. de La Salle (SaintDomingue, 17921793) (Quimper, 1897), 38.
13. Malenfant, Des colonies, 1820, 27, 75; Madiou, Histoire dHati, 1:13132;
Ardouin, Etudes sur lhistoire dHati, 1:70; Corre, Papiers du Gnral de La Salle, 36
37. The slaves owners were each paid 50 portugaises ($400) in compensation; only three
of them, who wanted to execute their slaves, objected. One source claims that this corps
was already in existence, raised either by white or free colored planters in the mountains
of Port au Prince in late December 1791: Bibliothque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits
(hereafter BN), NAF 14878, f. 96.
14. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Southern Historical Collection, Caradeuc Papers, Boissonire Desur to Caradeux, September 21, and November 13, 1792;
Malenfant, Des colonies, 1820, 34, 44; AGI, SD 955, Garca to Acua, November 25,
1792; CAOM, F3/141, f. 393 and F3/267, f. 39798; Archivo General de Simancas,
Guerra Moderna (hereafter AGS, GM) 7157, Aybar to Portillo, June 24, 1793.
15. AGS, GM 7157, letters of Bobadilla and Portillo, JuneAugust 1793; Geggus,
Slavery, War and Revolution, 105, 130, 312; Madiou, Histoire dHati, 1:237, 24950.
16. Petit Sminaire Saint-Martial, Port au Prince, Manuscrits, declaration of Lascaves,
3 Jan. 1792; Commission des Colonies, Dbats, 3:18384; Foubert, Les habitations
Laborde, 786; Procs-Verbaux de lAssembl Gnrale (1791), 35051; Mmoires du
gnral Bigarr (Paris, 1893), 28. Bigarr recalled that Couacou led six hundred men.
This is most unlikely; he led only fty-seven in January 1793. See Bernard Foubert, Les
volontaires nationaux de lAube et de la Seine Infrieure Saint Domingue, Bulletin de
la Socit dHistoire de la Guadeloupe 51 (1982): 38.
17. David Geggus, Slave, Soldier, Rebel: The Strange Career of Jean Kina, Jamaican
Historical Review 12 (1980): 3351.
18. Letter of March 24, 1792, in Moniteur Gnral de la Partie Franoise de SaintDomingue 155 (1793); AN, Dxxv/20/206, f. 13; CAOM, F3/141, f. 370, 400401;
Foubert, Les volontaires nationaux, 37.
19. Captain Colvilles notebook (unpaginated), property of Lord Colville of Culross.
20. Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, 100104, 389.
21. David Geggus, The Great Powers and the Haitian Revolution, in Tordesillas y
sus consecuencias: La poltica de las grandes potencias europeas respecto a Amrica
latina (14941898), ed. Berndt Schrter and Karin Schller (Madrid, 1995), 11521;
AGS, GM 7161, Acua to Garca, February 22 and March 26, 1793.
22. AGI, SD 1031, Garca to Llaguno, June 11, 1793, SD 956, Bellair to Garca,
September 16, 1793, and Estado, 1/3, expediente 10, enclosure 8; Bibliothque Municipale, Rouen, Ms. Leber 5847, f. 60.
23. Public Record Ofce, London, WO 1/59, f. 22999; AGS, Estado 8150.
24. David Geggus, From His Most Catholic Majesty to the Godless Rpublique: The
Volte Face of Toussaint Louverture, Revue Franaise dHistoire dOutre-Mer 65 (1978):
48199.
25. Jane Landers, Rebellion and Royalism in Spanish Florida: The French Revolution
on Spains Northern Colonial Frontier, in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution
and the Greater Caribbean, ed. D. B. Gaspar and D. P. Geggus (Bloomington, 1997),

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David Geggus

15677; David Geggus, The Slave Leaders in Exile: Spains Resettlement of Its Black
Auxiliary Troops, in Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 179203.
26. AN, Dxxv/7/62, f. 12, and Dxxv/7/61, f. 26.
27. Baillio, an [Sr.], Mmoire pour les citoyens Verneuil, Baillio jeune, Fournier, et
Gervais, dports de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1794), 9; CAOM, CC9A/9, Gasnier to
Navy Minister, March 18, 1793; AN, Dxxv/7/61, f. 49, 60, 67; BN, NAF 14878, f. 104;
AN, Dxxv/20/208, f. 11.
28. Service Historique de lArme de Terre, Vincennes, Ms. 590 (unpaginated), memoir by Charles Derononcourt, September 1794; AGI, SD 1031, memoir dated August 25,
1793.
29. This section is drawn from Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, 31525.
30. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 17701823
(Ithaca, 1975), 7282.
31. AGS, GM 7157, Garca to Acua, July 3, 1793, and GM 7159, Garca to Gardoqui, April 10, 1794; Jos Luciano Franco, Las conspiraciones de 1810 y 1812 (Havana,
1977), 95.
32. On gendarmeries, see AN, Dxxv/31/315; on the militia, see New York Public
Library, West Indian Collection, Santo Domingo, De Cressac Papers; Moniteur Gnral
de la Partie Franoise de Saint-Domingue 68 (1792). The governor wrote that the militia
were good for a coup de main but hopeless for anything longer, because the whites
cannot stand any sort of fatigue or discomfort; they have to have wine, liquor, fresh meat,
stews, and servants. Its quite pitiful, and an incredible to-do just to move them. See AN,
Dxxv/46/433, letter of November 16, 1791.
33. AN, Dxxv/12/116, letter of August 3, 1793 (quotation).
34. Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, 28789. On the British West India regiments, see Roger N. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments
(New Haven, 1979), and Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower: The British
Expeditions to the West Indies and the War Against Revolutionary France (Oxford,
1987).

Citizen Soldiers: Emancipation and Military

Service in the Revolutionary French Caribbean
laurent dubois

In 1794 a British troop attacked Pointe--Pitre, the economic capital of

the island of Guadeloupe, in a failed attempt to wrest it from the control of
French republican troops. As he led his troops into the city, a captain was
severely wounded by the explosion of an ammunition depot. His burning
clothes were pulled off by some of his brother ofcers, but his face and
hands were rendered entirely black by the explosion. In the confusion, a
group of his own grenadiers, taking him for one of the French blacks, attacked him with charged bayonets, and wounded him in three places before he
could make himself known to them. At the time of this incident, emancipation had only recently been decreed, and the British in the Eastern Caribbean
had not been confronting republican troops comprised of a majority of exslaves for very long. Yet blackness had already become a kind of military
uniform of the French, a military color that could incite immediate attack.
A few years earlier it would probably have been difcult for anyone, white
or black, to imagine that black soldiersmany of them ex-slaveswould
soon be the backbone of the French army in the Caribbean. When, in the wake
of the 1791 insurrection in Saint-Domingue, there were reports that among
the slave insurgents were whites who were leading them with blackened
faces, who were discovered by their hair, the idea that whites and blacks were
joined in rebellion was stunning and execrable to most observers. But by 1794,

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insurrection had been transformed into military assimilation as part of the

Republics war, and the idea of whites, blacks, and gens de couleur joined
together in a struggle for liberty was the foundation of Frances colonial policy.
In an engraving celebrating the liberty of the colonies, two black gures
dressed in what was intended to be African costume were shown under the
heading Rights of Man. One of the black gures had his arm around a
uniformed white soldier, while a white woman held out a similar uniform to
another slave. Despite the racist intimations of its portrait of African primitivism being concealed by republican civilization, the engraving was an
acknowledgment of the radical implications of the incorporation of ex-slaves
into the military units of the Republic.
During the 1790s the Caribbean region became a major theater in the global
conict that raged between France and Britain. As the war between the two
nations exploded in 1793, the British took advantage of the conicts within
the French colonies and achieved a rapid series of victories. They invaded
Saint-Domingue in September 1793 and within a few months were rmly
established in the rich western province of the colony. Soon afterwards, they
overran Guadeloupe and Martinique, the two major French possessions in the
Eastern Caribbean. In all these attacks, they proted from the support of local
French royalists. In Saint-Domingue, the republican commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel were in the midst of consolidating their regime of emancipation when the British invaded, and they used ex-slaves in their defense of the
colony, but they only managed to stop, and not reverse, the British advance.
The decree of emancipation passed by the National Convention in Paris in
February 1794 transformed the imperial conict in the Caribbean into a war
over the existence of slavery itself. French military fortunes soon began to
change, at least for a while. In June 1794, Toussaint Louverture rallied to the
French Republic, bringing a sizable army with him, and soon carried out a
series of brilliant victories against both the Spanish (whom he had previously
been serving) and the British. In the Eastern Caribbean, a small troop of
French soldiers took back Guadeloupe by recruiting the slaves they liberated
into the army. From Guadeloupe, republican troops supported pro-French
rebels in Grenada, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia, in the latter case capturing
the island for the British. Ultimately, the large British expeditions that were
mounted to counter the French advances drained resources and menby the
end of the 1790s an estimated sixty thousand British soldiers had lost their
livesplaying a crucial though often unacknowledged role in the global
Franco-British conict.
The mobilization of armies of citizen-soldiers was a major part of the political transformations brought about by the French Revolution on the European

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continent. Military service provided many men with unprecedented opportunities for social mobility based on merit rather than background, and service
in the military was frequently presented as the ultimate expression of republican citizenship. In the French Caribbean, the recruitment of gens de couleur
(free coloreds) and ex-slaves into the armies of the Republic also had a major
impact on social structure and politics. Before emancipation, it was through
military action that slave insurgents most clearly expressed their demands for
citizenship. Indeed, it was the transformation of insurgents into defenders of
the Republic in Saint-Domingue in 1793 that propelled the abolition of slavery
by the National Convention the following year. In the wake of this decision,
as administrators in the French Caribbean struggled to contain and channel
emancipation, military service became a way for male ex-slaves to demonstrate
and perform their attachment to republican France, and the courage of slaves
turned citizen-soldiers was touted as proof of their capacity for citizenship. It
was in the military arena that the principles of racial equality announced by the
abolition of slavery were applied to their fullest extent.
For gens de couleur, service in the republican army was in many ways the
continuation of pre-revolutionary service in militias and the marchausse
(police), although the new order provided more opportunities for promotion
than the old. For ex-slaves, however, military service represented an even more
radical transformation from a plantation or domestic laborer to a soldier with
a salary, a gun, and new mobility and social standing. For both these groups,
being part of a racially integrated republican army created important new opportunities. It is not surprising, therefore, that attacks against the racial egalitarianism of this army during the late 1790s and early 1800s were a crucial part
of turning many of these citizen-soldiers against French administrators.
The history of the military in revolutionary Saint-Domingue has been fairly
well documented, notably in the biographies of gures such as Louverture,
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe, but less attention has been
paid to the armies of the French colonies of the Eastern Caribbean during this
period. This chapter focuses on the lives of the soldiers and sailors from Guadeloupe (and, to a lesser extent, Martinique), which provide us with insight
into the political meaning and social impact military service had in this region. Although the general processes of recruitment in both areas were similar,
there were signicant differences between the two theaters of war. Whereas
the campaigns in Saint-Domingue were primarily confrontations between
land armies, the campaigns in the Eastern Caribbean involved attacks that
fanned out from Guadeloupe to several other islands and unorthodox alliances between arriving troops and slaves in the British colonies. And whereas
the black ofcer Toussaint Louverture was in military and political control of

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much of Saint-Domingue by the late 1790s, in Guadeloupe military and administrative control remained in the hands of white men sent from the metropole, at least until a revolt broke out on the island in 1802. The fate of the exslaves and gens de couleur of the two colonies was also sharply distinct: in
Saint-Domingue, the armies forged by Louverture and his generals ultimately
won a dramatic victory against the French troops sent to crush them; in Guadeloupe they were decimated in an equally dramatic defeat that was followed
by the reenslavement of most of the population.

Slaves into Soldiers

On February 5, 1794one day after the abolition of slavery in all the
French colonies was decreed across the Atlantic by the National Convention
the citoyen Lacharrire-Larery mounted the stand of a Jacobin club in Guadeloupes capital, Basse-Terre. He was an homme de couleur, one among many
who during the preceding year had become active participants in the political
life of the island. His speech, however, was aimed at integrating another group
into the political life of the colony: the slaves. Lacharrire-Larery argued in
favor of a project to arm slaves to protect Guadeloupe from internal and
external enemies of the Republic. Let us create new defenders of liberty, he
commanded, dismissing those who feared that as soon as they are released
from slavery, these armed men would attack their fellow soldiers rather than
the enemy. Service to the nation, he argued, would transform worthy slaves
into valuable citizens: We cannot give political rights to people who have
done nothing to deserve it, it will be said; perhaps not, but we can show them
what is expected and give them the means to achieve it. May he who can show
three wounds be freed immediately . . . may he who has saved the life of a
citizen, be immediately declared a citizen himself. The recompense for actions
and virtues will awaken honor in the souls of these new men, and will prepare
them by degrees to be admitted into the class of free men. . . . [T]o make war
you need two things, men and money; men we can make. These arguments
were seconded at the same club four days later by Joseph Hays, another free
colored citizen of Basse-Terre. Hays called on all to unite behind the Republic
and support the arming of the slaves. Having heard this speech, the Jacobin
Club voted enthusiastically to publish it with the signatures of all its members, along with the signatures of those who had been in the galleries during
the speech.
Although on the surface Lacharrire-Larerys proposal was fairly timidit
was consistent with a long tradition of freeing slaves for heroic military service, and few slaves would have fullled the conditions he set for the boon of

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237

freedomit had radical implications in the particular context in which it was

presented. A little less than a year earlier, in April 1793, the deadliest slave
revolt in the history of the island had taken place in the nearby town of TroisRivires, during which many of the resident whites had been killed. The insurgents spared only one plantation, and its owner, one of the few pro-republican
planters in the town. They did not loot the plantations or burn the cane.
Instead, they followed their insurrection with an orderly march toward the
capital of Basse-Terre, and when they met the white troops sent to put down
the revolt, the slave participants presented themselves as citizens and friends
and explained that they had risen up to defend the Republic against their
royalist masters. The whites of the island essentially accepted this version of
the events and pursuedto a large extent based on the testimony of the slave
insurgents themselvesthe various groups of whites the slaves had attacked.
The slaves, then, had given palpable proof of their potential power, and some
republican whites on the island, chang from various defeats they had suffered
at the hand of the royalists on the island, openly declared that the slave insurgents had saved the colony.
The actions of the insurgents of Trois-Rivires and of their leader JeanBaptiste had both provided an example of and created the conditions for the
arguments made in favor of the arming of slaves by administrators and political activists in the colony in early 1794. Jean-Baptiste had in fact been held in
custody in Basse-Terre during the previous year, although he had the right to
circulate as he pleased. He might well have discussed the question of the
arming of slaves with individuals such as Hays and Lacharrire-Larery. Indeed,
among the names signed to the speech supporting Hayss call for the creation of
slave troops was one Jean-Baptisteperhaps the insurgent leader, or perhaps a free individual with the same name. In the end, however, the attempt to
arm slaves in defense of Guadeloupe was too little, too late. The governor of
the island did raise a battalion of three hundred chasseurs noirs, recruited from
among the plantation slaves, to ght for the Republic. The reward for their
service was to be indenite liberty. The presence of this small unit did little to
save the deeply divided colony against the large British expedition that invaded
Guadeloupe in late March 1794. As the British troops, having taken over
Pointe--Pitre, advanced toward Basse-Terre, the Bataillon dEsclaves
Slave Battalionapparently abandoned its post above the town. Many
royalist whites, meanwhile, actively collaborated with the British occupiers.
A group of republicans who fought the invasion and were deported from
the island eventually brought the story of the Trois-Rivires insurrection to
France, describing how the republicans of Guadeloupe had been saved from a
royalist conspiracy when some of the negroes who had been armed to carry it

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out turned the weapons against the conspirators, crying that they were Republicans, and in so doing pulled the patriots out of their lethargyonly to
see the incompetence of the governor and the hostility of the planters to the
idea of arming slaves pave the way for a British takeover.
The situation took a very different course in Saint-Domingue. There, the
republican commissioner, Lgr Flicit Sonthonax, faced some of the same
problems as his comrades in Guadeloupe: royalist whites were in open sedition against the Republic, and some were actively courting the British, who
they hoped would invade and preserve slavery and racial hierarchy in the
colony. But Sonthonax also faced an imposing military force of slave insurgents who, since the mass uprising of August 1791, had consolidated their
forces and established themselves in camps throughout the northern province
of the colony, in the process effectively smashing plantation slavery in much of
the region. Although Guadeloupes republicans had found slave allies during
the Trois-Rivires revolt, the military power of the insurgents there paled in
comparison to that of those in Saint-Domingue. While the republicans of
Guadeloupe discussed recruiting slaves to form a pro-republican military
force, Sonthonax made an alliance with a military force that had already
proved its power and effectiveness. In 1793, when an uprising broke out
against Sonthonax in Le Cap, he turned to the insurgent slaves, offering them
liberty and citizenship if they came to his assistance. This rst act spiraled into
a broader offer of freedom to all slaves who joined the Republic and ultimately
into a general emancipation in Saint-Domingue. For the slaves of Guadeloupe,
this abolition in their sister colony would ultimately bring them freedom as
well, for in February 1794 the emancipation proclaimed by Sonthonax in
Saint-Domingue was ratied and extended to all the French colonies.
In June 1794 a otilla of republican troops arrived from France, led by a man
named Victor Hugues. He had been given the mission of bringing the decree of
emancipation voted in Paris to the Eastern Caribbean. Hugues faced a wellfortied island manned by the British troops who had occupied the island with
the help of royalist French. Nevertheless, in a military action that was touted
by avid republicans in France as an example of the almost superhuman qualities of the sans-culottes who fought for universal liberty, the French soldiers
joined by the slaves they freedmanaged to rout the British forces and take
back Grande-Terre. In celebrating the initial victory two months later, Hugues
compared the military feat of the republicans in Guadeloupe to the military accomplishments of the Roman legions and praised the population of the colony,
including the Citoyens noirs who, thankful for the blessings granted them by
the French nation, have shared in our victories by ghting for Liberty.
Writing a few years later, the historian Bryan Edwards pointed to the re-

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cruitment of blacks and mulattoes by Hugues as one of the reasons for the
French victory: Observing how severely his own troops, as well as ours,
suffered from the climate, [Hugues] conceived the project of arming in his
service, as many blacks and mulattoes as he could collect. These men, inured
to the climate, and having nothing to lose, ocked to his standard in great
numbers, and were soon brought into some degree of order and discipline.
We have few details about how the recruitment worked during the days after
the French expedition arrived, but after the taking of Pointe--Pitre, the commissioners made a haphazard policy ofcial, calling on citizens of all colors
to join in the ght against the British, who had made the citizens of Guadeloupe without distinction into a people of slaves. In a report he wrote
a few weeks later, Hugues said of the new recruits: Many have taken up arms
and shown themselves worthy of the ght for Liberty. His decision to create
battalions composed of sans-culottes of all colors, he wrote, was a success. It
was, indeed, a quite remarkable early experiment in the formation of interracial military units, one in which the equality of soldiers wasat least ofciallycomplete. This mix has had the best possible effect on the former
slaves. I have granted them the same pay as the troops from France. They
exercise twice a day and are attered to be treated like our brothers the sansculottes, who, thanks to my constant fraternal exhortations, respect the former slaves as much as is possible. Hugues praised these new soldiers behavior in battle: the Black Citizens, our new brothers, have shown on this
occasion what the spirit of Liberty can accomplish; out of men previously
brutalized by slavery, she made heroes. His opinion of the slaves was seconded by the naval ofcer Pierre Villegegu, who wrote: In all our diverse
attacks the Citoyens ngres behaved themselves well and we can praise them
for their courage. Hugues, however, also tempered his praise by adding that
the blacks alone, without Europeans, will never ght well. The integration
of army units, then, was for Hugues as much a way of making sure Europeans were always alongside the black troops as it was an expression of a
desire for equality. Nevertheless, the creation of such units, and the granting of
equal pay to ex-slaves and Europeans, was a remarkable step for the time.
In the next few years, ex-slaves became the backbone of the republican army
of Guadeloupe. In 1796 Hugues boasted that blacks made up 7/8ths of the
army soldiers, sergeants and corporals and a third of the ofcers in his
army. We have nothing but praise for their wisdom, he continued; their
presence and their discipline are the despair of our enemies. The rst Bataillon des Sans-Culottes he had formed in 1794 had been followed by several
others. In 1795 and 1796 there were at least four other battalions on the
island, including the second and third Bataillions des Sans-Culottes and the

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Bataillion des Antilles. By 1796, of the approximately forty-six hundred soldiers in the garrison of Guadeloupe, only 20 percent had arrived from France,
and more than 50 percent were ex-slaves. The following year it was estimated
that there were about thirty-six hundred soldiers, with similar proportions of
Europeans and ex-slaves; thus about 5 percent of the freed men in the colony
were serving in the army. But these numbers did not include the substantial
number of soldiers, from Guadeloupe and Martinique as well as from the
British islands, who fought in the service of the French Republic elsewhere in
the region, for instance, in a unit called the Bataillion de Sainte-Lucie. There
may have been as many as eleven thousand such soldiers at the height of the
campaigns, during 1795 and 1796, when for a moment it seemed as if the
French Republic was on the verge of gaining control of the some of the most
valuable British colonies in the Eastern Caribbean.

The Contagious Republic

The recruitment of ex-slaves into the army of Guadeloupe starting in
1794 set the stage for a military campaign against three British colonies in the
Eastern Caribbean: St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent. These colonies, originally settled by French inhabitants, were ceded to the Great Britain at the end
of the Seven Years War. The many French settlers who stayed lived in an
uneasy peace with the arriving British settlers and administrators, who were
often suspicious of their loyalty. (In St. Vincent the political conict between
British and French inhabitants was made more complicated by the presence of
the Black Caribs, a group descended from the mixture of Caribs and African
maroons and who had long had a close relationship with the French.) After
1789, many French settlers responded enthusiastically to the news of the Revolution, especially free people of color who drew inspiration from the ultimately successful struggle for racial equality in the French Empire. Repressive
policies implemented against free coloreds by the British administrators,
meant in principle to avoid political tumult, instead encouraged many French
residents to turn against British administrators, particularly in St. Lucia. These
conicts set the stage for the warfare of the mid1790s, when large numbers
of slaves took up arms against the British on several islands.
The 1794 decree of emancipation and its effective application by Hugues in
Guadeloupe sent ripples of revolt and fear through the Eastern Caribbean.
Lieutenant General Sir Charles Grey wrote in September 1794 that the British
were ever apprehensive of an Insurrection among the Negroes, in consequence of the Note of Emancipation of the French Government. Hugues
understood that the promise of liberty offered to British slaves could be an

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extremely potent weapon, and he sent envoys to support and stir up local
insurrections and ultimately sent black troops from his base in Guadeloupe to
ght with local rebels to take over the islands for the French.
In March 1795 an insurrection broke out among the slaves and gens de
couleur in Grenada. Led by Julian Fedon, an homme de couleur of French
ancestry, it quickly engulfed the island. Doubting the loyalty of the free coloreds and French whites who composed more than half of the militia on the
island, British ofcials withheld arms from them, and in so doing seriously
undermined their ability to respond to the revolt. The insurgents killed whites
and took the British governor prisoner, demanding the surrender of the islands
forts and ordering all residents to rally to the French ag. Hugues declared his
support for the insurgents and sent an agent to the island. Fedon, meanwhile,
gathered together a substantial ghting force of several thousand men that far
outnumbered the British troops on the island. When the British attacked, he
defeated them and executed his British prisoners, including the governor. The
British retreated to the capital of St. George, while Fedons army pillaged and
destroyed the abandoned plantations on the rest of the island. They could do
little against the massive and growing army of slaves determined to gain their
freedom by means of a French takeover of the island.
The British responded to Fedon by arming slaves to ght him. They created
a corps of Black Rangers, recruiting slaves and promising them individual
freedom in return for their service. Ofcials in St. Vincent, who were battling
an uprising among Black Caribs and slaves on the island, also formed such a
corps. Although members of the Rangers sometimes defected to the other side,
attracted perhaps by the French promise of universal emancipation, most of
these slave troops served loyally. Indeed, they played a crucial role in sparing
the British a total defeat in St. Vincent and Grenada. Although republicans
managed to keep control over much of the territory of these two islands until
the middle of 1796, they never managed to take over the islands.
In St. Lucia, however, the French and their slave allies delivered a total
defeat to the British. Since the early 1790s, the island had harbored a particularly bold French republican contingent. They managed to depose the
British governor in 1792 and took effective control of the island. In early
1794, however, the same expedition that conquered Guadeloupe reestablished
British control in St. Lucia. Many of the French retreated to the interior of
the island and continued to harass the British. Lieutenant General Sir John
Vaughan, then commanding in St. Lucia, suggested in January 1795 that the
British arm and train a regiment of negroes, obtaining men either from the
various islands, if the local government would grant them, or if that were not
practicable, to import them to ght the republicans. Though this policy was

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not implemented, Vaughan did deploy the Black Carolina Corps, a unit composed of former slaves and free blacks who had fought with the British during
the American War of Independence, to ght the French brigands.
In February 1795 Hugues sent an envoy from Guadeloupe to make contact
with the French republicans. His name was Jean-Joseph Lambert, and he was
an homme de couleur who had lived in St. Lucia and fought with the republicans in the early 1790s; he had escaped to Guadeloupe after Hugues arrival.
Lambert carried a declaration to all the people of St. Lucia, calling on them to
join the French forces. His visit helped inspire slaves to leave their plantations
and join the rebels in the mountains. In April Hugues sent another agent,
Commissioner Goyrand, to the island, this time with soldiers and weapons.
Guided by a St. Lucian slave named Eustache, Goyrand joined with the insurgents on the island, and together they managed to secure republican control
over most of the territory outside the capital.
A series of British counterattacks made little progress against the insurgents,
who rarely committed themselves to large battles and instead continued lowlevel harassment from posts scattered throughout the interior of the island.
Meanwhile the ranks of the republican forces were swelled by the slaves who
had deserted their plantations. In June a small group of republicans, crying
Vive la Rpublique, managed to send the British in a disorderly retreat from
their last stronghold on the island. It was an impressive victory that echoed
Hugues success in Guadeloupe, for, as Goyrand described it, three hundred
volunteers from the island, armed with guns, along with three hundred piketoting slaves, had defeated twenty-four hundred British soldiers. The event
was one of the most disgraceful events that ever happened, according to one
British witness, for we had more Regular troops in Garrison there, than the
whole Brigand army, and which mostly consisted of Colord People, and yet
the British had retreated precipitously without a shot red. Saint Lucia was in
the hands of the French Republic. We have shattered the chains of the Africans in two beautiful colonies, Guadeloupe and St. Lucia, wrote Goyrand. It
was a victory for the slaves who had risen up in St. Lucia and for those who
had come to ght with them from Guadeloupe. The French policy of emancipation had proved itself a potent weapon of war.

Soldiers as Citizens
Military service transformed the identities of the gens de couleur and exslaves who became part of the republican forces, providing them with new
political, social, and economic power. Like the army that had been defending
France at the time Victor Hugues left for Guadeloupe, the republican army of

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the Caribbean was notable for the possibilities for rapid promotion it provided soldiers of all social classes. Indeed, military service in the Caribbean
opened up social mobility to an extent that surpassed that available in metropolitan France, since slaves who had always stood outside the legal order had
now found a place as primary defenders of a new legal order.
Although documentation about the army units set up by Hugues is fragmentary, it is possible to piece together a few details about their structure and the
ways they inuenced the lives of those of African descent who served in them.
In Bataillon des Sans-Culottes, the rst unit created by Hugues after his arrival
in 1794, there came to be a number of ofcers of African descent, such as Nol
Corbet and Pierre Gdon, who were probably free before 1794, as well as a
leper named Jean-Baptiste Vulcain, who was likely an ex-slave. Vulcain had
become an ofcer thanks to a provision by which any man who brought more
than twenty recruits to join the army would automatically be named a sergeant. Within a few months he had already risen to the rank of captain and
commanded both gens de couleur and ex-slaves. Ex-slave soldiers were a
presence in the new units that quickly multiplied on the island. The second
battalion, for instance, included many ex-slaves, some of them African-born,
who served in infantry as well as artillery companies. Service in this integrated
army unit seems to have created new networks that brought together ex-slaves
and metropolitan whites. For example, when ex-slave soldiers from this unit
were married, as several were in 1795 and 1796, the witnesses usually included ofcers of African descent as well as European soldiers serving in the
same unit as the groom. The Bataillon des Sans-Culottes and the relationships
that grew out if it therefore represented potent enaction of the possibilities for
social integration embodied in the republican decree of emancipation.
The weddings of ex-slave soldiers also give us some insight into the new
social and legal opportunities opened up by military service. With emancipation, all ex-slaves gained the legal rights that had always been denied them,
including the right to be legally married. A signicant majority of the ex-slaves
who appear in the registers taking advantage of this new right, however, were
soldiers, probably because their integration into the bureaucratic structures
and social networks of the military facilitated and encouraged their participation. Some soldiers were garrisoned close to their families, such as the former
slave Charles, who served in Basse-Terre close to his companion Lonide and
his newborn son Dsir, who still lived on the nearby Bisdary plantation, where
they had all once been slaves. But many soldiers, and often their partners and
wives, moved away from their plantations and to the towns when they served
in the military, in the process encountering new challenges and opportunities. Military service also created contexts for sustained involvement with the

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republican symbols and ideologies. The inuences are difcult to uncover,

although occasional evocative traces remain, as in the ex-slave Eugenie, who
gave her newborn child the name Sans-Culottes, perhaps as a way of honoring the father, Pierre, who served in an artillery unit.
The republican armies that served in Guadeloupe and in the campaigns of
the Eastern Caribbean also brought together men from a wide range of Caribbean islands. The French colony of Martinique, like Guadeloupe taken over in
1794, remained under British control throughout the 1790s. But many soldiers from Martinique ended up in Guadeloupe nevertheless. Somelike the
thirteen-year-old Alou and the thirty-two-year-old Romainhad likely escaped from British domination, and continued slavery, in Martinique. Others,
like the Martinican gens de couleur Louis Delgrs and Magloire Plage, had
been soldiers ghting for the Republic in 1794 when they were captured by the
British. Sent to Europe, they eventually made their way back to the Caribbean
to serve the Republic once again. As they fought alongside one another, Martinicans and Guadeloupeans also came in contact with individuals in the British colonies they were invading, notably the free coloreds and slaves who were
battling with them. In St. Lucia and Grenada many ex-slaves became part of
the republican army. In St. Vincent the ten-year-old ex-slave Augustin Miston
fought with the French. Louis Jason, who was sixty-two years old in 1794,
had escaped from the British island of Dominica to join the republicans.
Among the recruits from all these islands, furthermore, were many who had
actually been born in Africa. As they encountered one another, these men from
various islands probably confronted their differences but also had the opportunity to create and imagine new kinds of connections and alliances. Most of
the soldiers who fought against the British were eventually captured and sent
as prisoners to Europe, where they ended up in metropolitan France through
prisoner exchanges. This transatlantic experience also certainly gave them
new perspectives on the Caribbean societies in which they had lived. Ofcers
such as Delgrs and Plage would draw on these experiences when they became political leaders in the early 1800s.
The unconventional warfare practiced by the French republicans in Grenada, St. Vincent, and particularly St. Lucia, in which battleeld promotion
took on a particular importance, opened up opportunities for such new recruits to rise through the ranks of the army. After his victory against the
British, Commissioner Goyrand promoted many ofcers, notably Delgrs and
Plage, who became one of the highest-ranking ofcers in St. Lucia. Among
the ofcers Goyrand promoted in 1795 and 1796 were a number of men who
could not read or write and who may have been former slaves. Goyrand also
selected two men who had been leaders of the republican insurgents before his

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arrival to lead troops he sent to St. Vincent. One of them, Marin Pdre, was a
native of St. Lucia who was either a free colored or a slave before joining the
French, and his seventeen-year-old son also joined the republican army. Once
in St. Vincent, Marin Pdre, like other agents appointed by Goyrand and
Hugues, also promoted ofcers. Having been chosen and promoted, ofcers of
African descent gained the power to make their own determinations about
who should become an ofcer. As the ranks of the army became integrated, so
did the structure of promotion, and along with it the form and meaning of the
hierarchies and networks within the military.
Of course, military service could carry with it serious costs, and it left many
recruits from the Antilles permanently crippled. Among a group of black and
gens de couleur veterans gathered together on an island off the coast of France
in 1798, for instance, was Guenette, whose left leg had been fractured by
bullets, leaving it shorter than the right. A soldier named Guillaume had his
left leg destroyed by an exploding cannon ball. Narcisses wrist had been
destroyed by a bullet, Cofe and Coquille had been shot in the arm, and JeanBaptiste had lost several ngers to gunre; all of them were incapable of
handling a weapon. Another soldier named Jean-Baptiste had been shot repeatedly through the torso, leaving him with a hernia. Frderic had lost an eye.
Marc and Crepein Laporte had each had one of their legs amputated, while
Celestin and Franois Eglise had lost both of theirs. In a group of seventy-one
wounded soldiers from the Caribbean at the Ile dAix, thirty-three had been
crippled during imprisonment or battle in Europe during the winter, having
lost toes, sometimes all of them, to the frost. In addition to all those who were
wounded were those who died in battle or from disease, such as Claude Theodore, an ex-slave of Basse-Terre, who was twenty-two when he was emancipated in 1794 and, after ghting and being captured by the British, died at the
age of twenty-seven in a hospital off the coast of France.
Soldiers who faced such dangers were justiably proud of their service to
the Republic and were ready to defend the rights they believed such service
granted them. One of the benets of such service was, of course, the salaries
granted to soldiers and ofcers, which especially for ex-slaves provided newfound economic power. Their salaries enabled them to take advantage of the
opportunities for consumption in the towns and certainly changed their daily
lives and their relationships with family and friends. This economic power
could be defended, in turn, by the social power these individuals had as soldiers. In 1801, when a number of soldiers in Basse-Terre felt that they were
being overcharged by local merchants, several of them openly confronted the
injustice. Though the values of the various forms of currency used in Guadeloupe during this period were in principle xed, merchants in the town often

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granted less than the ofcial amount. Soldiers demanded the full value of their
currency from merchants; when shop owners refused, some soldiers simply
took what they thought they were entitled to for the money they had paid. Not
surprisingly, soldiers and merchants often ended up ghting in shops and in
the streets. Sometimes the ghts were about something else: the lack of respect shown by white merchants to black soldiers. After the grenadier Michel
fought with the merchant Descombes in the streets of Basse-Terre, ofcials
declared that Descombes had started the ght by saying things that were
infuriating to this grenadier. Perhaps to still the anger of Michel and other
black soldiers who were increasingly angry with the ofcials of the island,
Descombes was sentenced to eight days imprisonment in the Fort St. Charles.
Whatever it was he said to infuriate Michela racial slur, perhapshe
learned that it was dangerous to disrespect a soldier.

The Republican Corsairs

Military service in the army coexisted with another form of potentially
lucrative military service: that of the sailors who manned the republican corsairs. These small, speedy vessels were specially equipped and manned to
capture enemy or neutral ships going to foreign islands and bring their conscated cargo into the nearest French port. Beginning in January 1793, when the
National Convention passed a decree inviting citizens to arm corsairs to attack
enemy shipping, many French merchants and sailors participated in privateering in the Atlantic, attacking ships coming and going from British ports. Victor
Hugues began arming corsairs soon after his arrival in 1794, and by the end of
the year thirty were roving the local waters. By 1798 an estimated sixty to
eighty larger ships (with crews of several dozen sailors) and probably a number of smaller ones with smaller crews were operating out of Guadeloupe.
Between 1796 and 1798 alone, cases involving the capture of seven hundred
ships were heard in the court on the island. The island corsairs were different
in one crucial respect from those outtted in the metropolitan ports: their
crews included many ex-slaves freed by the 1794 emancipation decree. The
exact proportions are difcult to determine, but on many ships sailors of
African descent were apparently a majority. In 1797 one British ofcer noted
that the corsair crews were chiey Blacks and Mulattoes, and one historian
has estimated that during Hugues regime an estimated thirty-ve hundred exslaves were employed as sailors on corsairs. Such sailors faced a unique danger, for when the British managed to capture corsairs, they often sold captured
blacks into slavery rather than treating them as prisoners of war.
Sailors who served on corsairs were compensated by receiving a portion of
the captured loot. Although sometimes these shares could be quite large, sail-

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ors often came home with little or nothing to show for their efforts. A rare
document drawn up in 1800 by the local tribunal in Cayenne, which shows
the division of the loot from the capture of a ship from Massachusetts, suggests how meager the prots for sailors could be even when their corsair was
successful. A third of the total sum garnered from the sale of the vessel and its
cargo was set aside for the crew members, who were rewarded according to
their rank. The basic crew members, the matelots, received a portion worth
about 340 francs; the captain received ve times this amount, and the lowestranked mousses, such as Simon, noir received a half portion. What they
owed from the voyage was assiduously subtracted from these carefully calculated sums; Simon may well have wondered whether the 63 francs he nally
received for his efforts had been worthwhile. Comparatively, Simon was lucky,
since in another case where the Bergre participated with two other vessels in a
capture, mousses such as Augustin received only about 20 francs, before subtractions, for their efforts. The tribunal of Cayenne set aside the portions of
those who were dead or absent, in addition to receiving claims from various
parties who were owed money by sailors on the corsairs; Pistache, Magloire,
and Izidor, for instance, all owed the Citoyenne Gaulthier of Cayenne for
shirts she had made for them.
Still, sailors who were lucky might amass enough over the course of a few
years to live fairly well and even to invest in land on their islands. In 1799, for
instance, it was possible to buy a small piece of property in the heart of
Guadeloupes capital of Basse-Terre for twenty-ve hundred francs and plots
of land in the country or in smaller towns for substantially less. The sailors on
the corsairs were not the only ones who might prot from the loot they gained.
Since sailors often left before they could receive their portion of their ships
latest captures, they named citizens of the port towns (often women) to take
charge, in their absence, of collecting the amounts due to them. If the sailors
did not return, these individuals would inherit their portions. Although sailors
did not have the comfort of the consistent salaries soldiers received, the opportunity to serve on corsairs raised the possibility of an economic windfall that
might transform their lives. Like other black sailors in the Atlantic world, they
gained new perspectives on themselves and the broader world in which they
lived through their contacts with other sailors and their wide-ranging journeys
in the Caribbean.

The Danger of Soldiers

In 1796 a Guadeloupean planter complained: The blacks compose almost all of the army, and they take advantage of the rarity of whites, although
most of them, or nearly all of them, preserve a certain respect for whites which

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is a good sign. The next year, he noted that the multiple mutinies that had
occurred among the troops were the result of having only a small number of
whites in an army almost completely composed of blacks. The emergence
of a new group of soldiers and ofcers of African descent in the Caribbean
alarmed white planters for obvious reasons. Military service drew men away
from the plantations, and it encouraged them to see themselves as equals to
whites and as full members of a Republic they had defended with their lives.
Black troops were the vanguard of the broad social transformation in French
colonial society, and during the latter half of the 1790s they came to be a
symbol for many whites of the dangers of the emerging order.
The military achievements of the black troops of the French Caribbean in
the years following the emancipation decree of 1794 were enormous. In SaintDomingue, Toussaint Louverture had led his majority black troops in the
defeat of a large British invasion. In the Eastern Caribbean similar troops had
sometimes trounced and regularly harassed Frances enemy. By 1796, however, the tide was turning against the French advances in the lesser Antilles. A
large military expedition sent from Great Britain in early 1796 had managed
to land in St. Lucia, although the republicans once again regrouped in the
middle of the island and continued to ght. These reinforcements set in motion the defeat of the French-supported insurrections in Grenada and in St.
Vincent, where the entire population of Black Caribs was deported in 1797. In
1798, Victor Hugues was removed from his position in Guadeloupe to be
replaced by more moderate administrators, while the French began tempering
their use of privateering. The period of French military expansionand the
concomitant expansion of possibilities for ex-slaveswas coming to an end.
As it did, the racially integrated army this period had produced also came
under attack from certain quarters.
In May 1798, the Minister of the Colonies, a planter from Saint-Domingue
named Baron de Bruix, called for the creation of a segregated military unit that
would regroup all of the black or colored soldiers in metropolitan France.
Most of these soldiers had arrived in France after having been captured in the
Caribbean during the British campaigns of 1796 and 1797, and then exchanged for British prisoners held in France. Once in France, some had been
incorporated into other units and fought in different parts of Europe. The
1798 order required them to leave these units and to travel to an island off the
coast of France, the Ile dAix, where they would be regrouped into the new
unit. Once they arrived, many of those who had been ofcers were demoted
with the justication that their promotions on the eld of battle in the Caribbean were not legitimatedespite the fact that the homme de couleur captain
of the new company, Marin Pdre, had in fact promoted many of them himself

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when he led the republican mission in St. Vincent and was willing to vouch for
them. Some voted with their feetthe day after he was demoted from the rank
of sergeant to that of a common soldier, Peper Sejourna deserted with another
soldier from his hometown of St. Pierre, Martinique. But others sought redress
from the Republic they had served loyally during the previous years, writing to
a deputy named Etienne Mentoran homme de couleur from Martinique
who represented Saint-Domingue in the Parliament at the time. They asked
him to intervene on their behalf to end their humiliating separation from the
whites and request that they be employed without distinction, like their
comrades-at-arms, in the armies of the Republic. Mentor took up their case
in Parliament, sharply attacking the formation of the battalion, arguing that it
set up a situation in which these soldiers were isolated from their European
comrades, so that it seems that they are being punished for having supported,
in the New World, the principles of the Republic. How could governors dare
to re-establish such insulting distinctions? These courageous soldiers wish
only to die ghting for the French Republic, he declared. Mentors proposition to retract the order was unanimously adopted. Soon afterwards, Bruix
was relieved of his functions.
Although this attempt to institute racial segregation in the military failed,
the broader political movement of which it was a part only grew stronger in
the following years. Planters and merchants who argued that emancipation
was an economic and social disaster gained an increasing hearing within government circles in Paris. Although at rst few advocated a return to slavery,
many did suggest the need to return to some of the old forms of coercion and
racial hierarchy. White administrators wanted to make sure that the plantations would continue to be worked by individuals who, if they were no longer
enslaved, were still unremittingly submissive, and many saw the presence of
black troops and ofcers as incompatible with this goal. The movement to
turn back the changes brought on by emancipation won a victory in 1801
when Napoleon Bonaparte declared he would apply a set of particular laws
to the colonies. Representing a break from the previous policy of political
integration between the French metropole and its colonies, it meant that there
would no longer be colonial representatives in Paris to stand up for the people
of the Caribbean as Etienne Mentor had in 1798. Having become a major
force in the changed societies of the French Caribbean, black soldiers understood that such attempts to reverse these changes had dangerous implications
for them and their communities. In Saint-Domingue, Toussaint Louverture
had made himself the de facto leader of the colony. The army, which served to
discipline plantation laborers as well as protect the colony from invaders,
was almost entirely under the command of black generals. Louverture boldly

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responded to Bonapartes 1801 decision by creating his own constitution for

Saint-Domingue, which made him its governor.
In Guadeloupe, however, white ofcers and administrators were still in
control. Late in 1801, the ofcer Magloire Plagethe Martinican homme de
couleur and high-ranking veteran of the campaigns in St. Luciawas passed
over for promotion by a metropolitan administrator who named himself general of the army in his place. Black troops on the island rebelled and expelled
the administrator from the island, and Plage formed a provisional government to rule Guadeloupe. The insurgents appealed to the metropole, expressing their loyalty to France even as they argued for their right to full access to
military and political rights. By then, however, Bonapartewell on his way to
signing a peace treaty with the Britishhad sent expeditions to the Caribbean
to crush the power of the black leaders in both Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe and prepare for a return to the old order of plantation slavery and racial
hierarchy. The French troops encountered resistance in Saint-Domingue, but
within a few months they won what seemed like a nal victory, capturing
Toussaint Louverture and winning over most of the black troops and ofcers.
They did so in part by denying that they had the intention of reestablishing
slavery in the colony and playing on the loyalty to France of many of the black
veterans on the island. An expedition led by General Richepance did the same
thing in Guadeloupe, where it encountered resistance led by the homme de
couleur ofcer Louis Delgrs. Helped by allies among the black troops, notably Magloire Plage, they managed to defeat the rebels. Plantation workers
also joined in the ghting in Guadeloupe, often spurning the more traditional
tactics of the soldiers in favor of burning plantations and attacking white
civilians. And after the mass of the insurgents had been defeated, small bands,
including one led by a veteran of the invasion of St. Lucia, continued to ght
the French.
Having defeated most of the resistance in Guadeloupe, the islands new
administrators executed thousands of insurgents and deported many more,
giving some captains orders to drop them off on abandoned coasts in the
United States and sending hundreds to Europe, where they ended up in Corsica. General Richepance was convinced that the preservation of the colony
depended on the elimination of all former slaves or gens de couleur who had
served the army. Let us not fall into the error of believing that we can arm
blacks and use them in our army, he wrote to the minister. Accordingly, he
had more than a thousand hommes de couleur and noirs who had been part
of the armed forces and were recognized in the colony as dangerous men
deported. Even Magloire Plage and other ofcers who had fought with the
French in Guadeloupe suffered the same fate; the Minister of the Colonies
made it clear that, notwithstanding their previous military positions, they

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were to be treated as enemies of the Republic because of the unsurpassed

crimes that had bloodied the American colonies. Apparently, rebellion was
contagious; a group of French ofcers whose only crime had been to be held
prisoner briey by Delgrs and his troops in the Fort St. Charles were also
imprisoned and deported by Richepance.
The repression of the revolt was the rst step in the reestablishment of
slavery in the colony, which was carried out successfully in the following
months by a new colonial administration. At one point the ranking general
suggested that in order to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance it might be
useful to recruit plantation laborers to ght against them. The idea gave the
prefect of the island, the one-time abolitionist Daniel Lescallier, a bout of
insomnia. I barely slept last night, he wrote. Once they are free, he wondered, what will we do with them? They will be vagabonds who from then on
will disdain cultivation and will become dangerous to society because of that,
and from the habit of carrying guns. Lescallier believed that the practice of
granting freedom for military service, which had helped shatter slavery a few
years earlier and had become one of the key symbols of republican emancipation, could ultimately have no place in a coercive colonial order.
He was probably wrong. Louvertures regime in Saint-Domingue had in fact
created an order in which plantation labor was effectively overseen by black
troops, and plantations were distributed to trusted ofcers who took on the
roles that had once been occupied by white slave owners. Perhaps racial equality and the sharing of power with individuals of African descent could have
guaranteed the preservation of a plantation system in Frances most valuable
colony and kept sugar owing across the Atlantic to its ports for decades to
come. Ultimately, though, the threat of black military power drove Frances
leaders into an unreasoned, brutal, and disastrous attempt to destroy the
armies that once had saved their colonies. When news of what had happened
in Guadeloupe ltered into Saint-Domingue, the ex-slaves who made up the
army of the Republic began deserting and transformed themselves into an
army of national liberation. The mass of soldiers, and the plantation laborers
who joined them, understood that defeat would mean reenslavement. Only
their own Republic, with their own army, could guarantee that the freedom
they had won would be theirs for good.
Notes
I thank Christopher Brown, David Geggus, Jane Landers, Andrew OShaughnessy, and
Philip Morgan, whose comments shaped the nal version of this chapter. The chapter draws on and condenses material presented in various parts of my A Colony of
Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 17871804
(Chapel Hill, 2004).

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1. Cooper Williams, An Account of the Campaign in the West Indies in the Year 1794
(London, 1796; reprint, Basse-Terre, 1990), 125.
2. For the white insurgents in blackface, see Philadelphia General Advertiser 321
(October 10, 1791); on the engravingwhich is generally dated 1791 but which was
probably printed in 1794see Helen Weston, Representing the Right to Represent: The
Portrait of Citizen Belley, Ex-Representative of the Colonies, by A.L. Girodet, Res 26
(Autumn 1994): 83109, 89.
3. On the British campaigns in Saint-Domingue and the eastern Caribbean see David
Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution (Oxford, 1982). See also Michael Duffy, Soldiers,
Sugar and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War Against
Revolutionary France (Oxford, 1987).
4. Louvertures military victories are described in C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins
(New York, 1963). An overview of the events in Grenada, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia is
provided in Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West
Indies (Ithaca, 1982), chaps. 15 and 16; see also Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower.
5. On Saint-Domingue see Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue
Revolution from Below (Knoxville, 1990). The classic study of the French Revolutionary
army is Richard Cobb, The Peoples Armies (New Haven, 1987).
6. On free-colored service in the militias see John Garrigus, Catalyst or Catastrophe? Saint-Domingues Free Men of Color and the Battle of Savannah, 17791782,
Revista Interamericana 22:12 (Spring 1992): 109124; and Stewart King, Blue Coat or
Powdered Wig? Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens,
2001), chap. 4.
7. Extrait des rgistres . . . Socit de Amis de la Rpublique franaise, 17 Pluviose

An 2 (February 5, 1794) and 21 Pluviose

An 2 (February 9, 1794), Archives Nationales,
Paris (hereafter AN), AD VII 21C, nos. 45 and 46.
8. I describe this event in detail in Colony of Citizens, pt. 1.
9. On the formation of the battalion of chasseurs noirs, see Anne Protin-Dumon,
Etre patriote sous les tropiques: La Guadeloupe et la Rvolution franaise (Basse-Terre,
1984), 217; on the attack of Guadeloupe see Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower, chaps.
26, particularly 9397; on the Slave Battalion, see the declaration of Michel Gaudin
in the rst Cahiers de Dclarations of Guadeloupean deportees, p. 66, in AN DXXV
123, dossier 976, no. 1; Les Patriotes dports de la Guadeloupe par les Anglais aux
membres de la Convention Nationale composant la Commission des Colonies, 20 Brumaire An 3 (November 10, 1796), AN AD VII 21C, no. 44.
10. On these events in Saint-Domingue see Fick, Making of Haiti, 157160; Robert
Louis Stein, Lger Flicit Sonthonax: The Lost Sentinel of the Republic (London, 1985),
chaps. 4, 5.
11. On Huguess regime see Dubois, Colony of Citizens, pt. 2; for the reports on the
taking of Guadeloupe see Les Commissaires Dlgus aux Iles du Vent par la Convention Nationale aux reprsentants du peuple composant le Comit de Salut Public, 18
Prairial An 2 (June 6, 1794), Archives NationalesSection Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence
(hereafter ANSOM), C7A 47, 56; Le Commissaire dlgu . . . aux Rpublicains des
armes de terre et de mer de la Rpublique, actuellement la Guadeloupe, 1 Thermidor
An 2 (July 19, 1794), ANSOM C7A 47, 18.

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12. Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the
West Indies (London, 1801), 3:470; Les Commissaires dlgus . . . tous les citoyens de
la Pointe--Pitre, 20 Prairial An 2 (June 8, 1794), ANSOM C7A 47, 9; Hugues to the
Comit de Salut Public, 4 Thermidor An 2 (July 22, 1794), ANSOM C7A 47, 2025.
13. Les Commissaire dlegus au Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies, 22 Thermidor An 4 (August 9, 1796), ANSOM C7A 49, 4345. Names of different battalions appear in numerous tat civil acts from these years; see, e.g., ANSOM EC Basseterre 6, nos. 5,
13, 33, 41, and EC Basseterre 7, no. 92; for the Bataillon de Sainte-Lucie see EC Basseterre
9, nos. 9, 28. The estimates of numbers of soldiers are from Jacques Adlade-Merlande,
Delgrs: La Guadeloupe en 1802 (Paris, 1986), 3748, and Louis-Franois Tigrane,
Histoire mconnue, histoire oublie que celle de la Guadeloupe et son arme pendant la
priode rvolutionnaire, Revue Historique 571 (JulySeptember 1989): 167186.
14. See Edward Cox, Free Coloreds in the Slave Societies of St. Kitts and Grenada,
17631833 (Knoxville, 1984). On the Black Caribs see Philip Boucher, Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 14921763 (Baltimore, 1992); Peter Hulme,
Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 14921797 (London, 1986).
15. David Barry Gaspar, La Guerre des Bois: Revolution, War and Slavery in Saint
Lucia, 17931838, in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, ed. David Barry Gaspar and David Geggus (Bloomington, 1997), 105.
16. Edward Cox, Fedons Rebellion 17951796: Causes and Consequences, Journal of Negro History 67:1 (Spring 1982): 719; Gordon Turnbull, A Narrative of the
Revolt and Insurrection in the Island of Grenada (London, 1796).
17. Cox, Fedons Rebellion, 8, 13; Les Commissaire dlgus . . . Arrt, 11
Germinal An 3 (31 March 1795), ANSOM C7A 48, 10; Charles Shephard, An Historical
Account of the Island of St. Vincent (London, 1831; reprint, London, 1971), 149175.
18. Gaspar, La Guerre des Bois (quotation is at 107); Duffy, Soldiers, 8991.
19. Mmoire de Jean-Joseph Lambert, AN ADVII 34A, no. 13; Goyrand, Dpche
du Commissaire de la Convention Nationale, 16 Vendmiaire An 4 (8 October 1795),
ANSOM C7A 49, 110; Compte rendu par le Sr. Goyrand, 6 Thermidor An 7 (24 July
1799), ANSOM C7A 49, 67109, 7380.
20. Gaspar, La Guerre des Bois, 104109; Duffy, Soldiers, 142.
21. ANSOM EC Basse-Terre 6, nos. 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 50. On Vulcain see also
Auguste Lacour, Histoire de la Guadeloupe (Basse-Terre, 1858), 2:314. See ANSOM EC
Basseterre 6, nos. 36, 42, 45; EC Basseterre 9, no. 136; EC Basseterre 10. nos. 40, 69.
22. ANSOM EC Basseterre 7, no. -#146, EC Basseterre 10, no. 107.
23. I draw the information about the troops who served in St. Lucia and St. Vincent
from the two Etats des Mouvements, in Archives Historiques de lArme de Terre,
Vincennes (hereafter AHAT), Xi, carton 80.
24. Formation de la Compagnie des hommes de couleur, Etat des ofciers des
diffrents grades, Etat des sous ofciers la suite, AHAT Xi, carton 80; for Sraphin
see ANSOM EC Basse-Terre 6, no. 66.
25. Etat des hommes blesss and, for Claude Thedore, Etat des mouvements,
AHAT Xi, carton 80.
26. Lacour, Histoire, 3:231232; arrest of Descombes, 8 Messidor An 9 (27 June
1801), in ANSOM C7A 55, 62.

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Laurent Dubois

27. H. J. K. Jenkins, Guadeloupes Commerce Raiding, 179698: Perspectives and

Contexts, Mariners Mirror 83:3 (August 1997): 303309, 305; Jenkins, Slavery and
French Privateering in the 1790s, Mariners Mirror 72:3 (1986), 359360; Jenkins,
The Heydey of French Privateering from Guadeloupe, 17961798, Mariners Mirror
64:3 (August 1978), 245250, 249. See also the register of captures in ANSOM, C7A 48,
158212. For the numbers of ex-slaves on the corsairs, see Tigrane, Histoire mconnue, 180181. The only corsair crew lists I have found are for ships outtted in 1800 in
Cayenne, French Guiana. Of the sixty-ve sailors on an 1800 crew list for the corsair
Importun, twenty-one were listed with only one name and were likely ex-slaves, but
Cayenne had a smaller proportion of slaves in its population than Guadeloupe; Repartition des prises, 9 Brumaire An 8, Archives Dpartementales de la Guyane, Cayenne
(hereafter ADGn) X, 16.
28. Rpartition des prises, 15 Messidor AN 8 and 1 Thermidor An 9. in ADGn X, 16.
29. For examples of distribution of loot from the corsairs by women see ADG Vauchelet 2E2/164, 7 Nivose
An 6 (27 December 1797) and 2E2/165, 12 Ventose
An 6 (1 March
1798); ADG Bonnet 2E2/41, 11 Messidor An 6 (29 June 1798), 30 Prairial An 6 (18 June
1798), 11 Thermidor An 6 (29 July 1798); for the cost of the house in Basse-Terre see the
purchase by the mason Augustin in ANSOM Dupuch 2E2/24, 13 Messidor An 7 (1 July
1799).
30. Thouluyre Mah to the Minister, 2 Ventose
An 4 (21 February 1796), and Coup
doeil, ANSOM C7A 49, 133, 138143.
31. See the law, from 3 Prairial An 6 (22 May 1798), in AN ADVII 20B; for the
soldiers at the Ile dAix, see the Formation de la Compagnie des hommes de couleur,
the Etat des sous-ofciers, the Etat des ofciers des diffrents grades, the Controles

des femmes et enfants, and the Etat des mouvements, AHAT Xi, carton 80; on the
letters sent by the soldiers, see Mentors angry letter to the Baron de Bruix of 21 Ventose

An 7 (10 March 1799), reprinted in Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot, La Socit des
Amis des Noirs, 17881799: Contribution lhistoire de labolition de lesclavage (Paris,
1998), 385392; for Mentors speech see Motion dordre faite par Mentor, AN ADVII
21A, no. 52.
32. See Yves Benot, La demence coloniale sous Napolon (Paris, 1991).
33. For more details see my Colony of Citizens, pt. 3.
34. Richepance to Minister, 11 Prairial An 10 (31 May 1802), ANSOM C7A 57, 1;
Lacrosse to Minister, 1 Vendmiaire An 11 (23 September 1802), ANSOM C7A 56, 157
158. On Plages deportation, see the Etat nominatif and the Acte daccusation in
ANSOM C7A 56, 278288; for the white ofcers, see their declaration of 18 Germinal
An 11 (8 April 1803), in AHAT B9, 2.
35. Mnard, Arrt, 23 Vendmiaire An 11 (15 October 1802), ANSOM C7A 57,
202203; Lescallier to Lacrosse, 30 Vendmiaire An 11 (22 October 1802), ANSOM
C7A 57, 204.
36. See Mats Lundahl, Toussaint LOuverture and the War Economy of SaintDomingue, 17961802, Slavery and Abolition 6:2 (September 1985): 122138.

The Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America:

From Independence to Abolition
peter blanchard

The long and bitter warfare that destroyed Spains colonial empire in
South America in the early nineteenth century provided the areas slaves with
an unprecedented opportunity to engage in military activity and simultaneously to undermine the institution that kept them in chains. The wars prompted
both patriot and royalist recruiters to tap a variety of sources to meet their
military needs, including professionals from Spain and the colonies, foreign
mercenaries, local militiamen, draftees and volunteers from the colonial population, vagabonds, criminals, and slaves. The recruitment of slaves indicated
the gravity of the situation, reversing as it did longstanding prohibitions against
arming this sector of the population. Thousands were ofcially recruited, and
countless others managed to serve by eeing their owners and enlisting as
freemen. Slaves consequently came to play a prominent role in the colonial
struggles, ghting to preserve the imperial tie as well as to destroy it. With
personal freedom the usual reward, their service also helped to weaken slavery,
both by reducing the number of slaves and by raising the hopes of those left in
bondage. Their struggle continued after the wars ended, because almost everywhere slavery managed to survive the long period of disruption. That struggle
frequently took place in the context of warfare as new conicts erupted, leading
to renewed recruiting, with freedom once more the reward. The freeing of
slaves along with the termination of the slave trade and the aging of the slave

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Peter Blanchard

population helped undermine slavery further, rendering it less and less viable.
In response, countries began introducing abolition legislation, until by the
1860s this relic of the colonial past had all but disappeared from Spains former
mainland colonies.
African slaves had a long history of military service in Spanish America.
During the Spanish conquest of the early sixteenth century, some slaves belonging to conquistadors fought as soldiers, and subsequently they were on
occasion used for military or security purposes, for example, serving on royal
ships and hunting down runaway slaves. The creation of militia units for local
defense obviated the need to arm slaves except in extreme circumstances, but
some of their descendants continued to play a military role with the incorporation of free blacks and mulattos (or pardos) into these units. The number of
militiamen increased in the late colonial period as the Crown, fearing foreign
attack, introduced a series of reforms that bolstered local military units. Consequently, the sight of blacks in uniform and bearing arms was not uncommon
in cities such as Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cartagena, Lima, Montevideo, and
Panam. There were black noncommissioned ofcers and even some black
ofcers, although whites were always in command. A few slaves may also have
been found in these units, in the person of runaways who had managed to
convince the authorities that they were free. In general, however, slaves were
excluded from the military, because those in positions of authority voiced
numerous objections. They pointed to the sanctity of property rights, the high
cost of compensation, and the slaves importance to economic activities; they
raised questions about slave loyalty; and they shared the widely held fear of
arming slaves. Moreover, alternative recruits were available from the free
population, whether white, Indian, black, or of mixed blood.
Opposition to slave recruiting intensied in the late colonial period in response to an increase in slave numbers and growing fears of that expanding
population. Spanish reforms in the eighteenth century included loosening controls on the African slave trade, resulting in an inux of African slaves. In
Buenos Aires, for example, about 45,000 were imported between 1740 and
1810, and 15,000 passed through Montevideo in the nal fty years of colonial rule. Consequently, on the eve of the struggles for independence, slaves
numbered around 30,000 in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, 78,000 in New
Granada (modern Colombia), more than 64,500 in Venezuela, and 40,000 in
Peru. Nowhere did they exceed more than 10 percent of the total population,
but they tended to be concentrated in certain regions, such as the gold-mining
area of Colombia and the coastal valleys of Peru, adding weight to their
numbers.
Opposition to arming slaves was also a response to the urry of slave un-

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257

rest that marked the late eighteenth century. Most threatening was the St.
Domingue revolution, which eventually ended slavery in the French colony
and established the black republic of Haiti. Uprisings in neighboring regions,
particularly Venezuela, aroused fears that French and Haitian revolutionary
ideas were spreading and led to increased attention to the slave population. In
Venezuela, for example, slave imports from Africa were curtailed, and in
Montevideo an 1803 order prohibited slaves as well as free blacks from carrying any type of weapon.
Arming slaves was thus a contentious issue, but necessity could overcome
even the strongest opposition, as the British invasions of the Viceroyalty of Rio
de la Plata in 1806 and 1807 plainly revealed. A footnote to the Napoleonic
Wars, the invasions were attempts to liberate a colony of Frances ally, Spain.
They proved to be a humiliating disaster for the British as the local population rallied twice to defend the area and to expel the invaders. Among those
recruited to confront the British were almost seven hundred local slaves who
served with a loyalty and courage which surprised those who had hesitated
about arming them. The reward for their service was personal freedom
that, though not respected in every case, set a precedent for what was soon
to follow.
The struggle for independence was a far more extreme circumstance than the
British incursions and created an immeasurably greater need for soldiers. The
ghting lasted from 1810 to 1826 and spread throughout the continent, forcing recruiters to look beyond the pool of professionals, militiamen, and volunteers to consider nontraditional sectors. At rst, in areas with a large black
population, continuing concerns about arming slaves and violating owners
property rights dictated policy, so that while free black units proliferated,
slaves remained largely untouched. Some owners donated a slave or two as a
gesture of support for self-rule or loyalty to the Crown, but the total numbers
were small. Other slaves ran away and joined on their own. Before long,
however, recruiters began to target slaves specically, in response to military
demands and the realization that slaves possessed attributes that seemed to
make them ideal soldiers. Most notably, there were large numbers of them and
they were accustomed to discipline. In addition, those recently arrived from
Africa were primarily young men who were believedrightly or wronglyto
possess both previous military experience and a propensity to savagery. Although recruiters expressed no preference as to creole or African-born slaves,
they made the case that those who had been recently enslaved probably remembered what it was like to be free, so that offering them freedom was likely
to win their loyalty and at the same time impose a degree of control over them.
Slaves were responsive to the offer, although in the majority of cases they

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Peter Blanchard

probably had no real choice. Most were donated or sold to the military. Others
were press-ganged by one army or another that apprehended unclaimed or
vagabond blacks, trolled jails, and conscated the property of slave-owners
who were considered enemies. Frequently, however, slaves took the initiative,
expressing their wish to serve or pressuring their owners to donate them. In
Buenos Aires one slave paid his owner to do so. Many more indicated their
desires by running away to join. They had numerous reasons to enlist. Loyalty
to king, homeland, or a local leader was frequently mentioned. Many saw
military service as an escape from the rigors of slave life and considered it no
more dangerous than their existing work. They may also have viewed it as an
opportunity to demonstrate that they were human beings and not simply
another persons property. Similarly, they may have wanted to challenge the
existing stereotype of slave docility; military service provided an environment
where they could be as bloodthirsty as they wished without fear of retribution.
They could earn money and perhaps a degree of respect, for they were joining
an increasingly important and inuential institution. The arms and the uniforms were also lures, as was the possibility for social mobility through military promotion, because many former slaves became noncommissioned ofcers. Some even managed to rise to the lower ranks of the ofcer grades.
All these attractions, however, paled beside the principal reason for the
slaves decision, which was to obtain their freedom. Manumission, especially
for young males, had been a scarce commodity before independenceas it
remained afterwardsso that being offered freedom in return for military
service proved a powerful incentive. This was apparent from the comments of
runaways who enlisted, men such as Alejandro Campusano, an Ecuadorian
slave, who recalled that the sweet voice of the patria came to my ears, and
desiring to be one of its soldiers, as much to shake off the yoke of general
oppression as to free myself from the slavery in which I existed, I ran swiftly to
present myself to the liberating troops of Quito. Runaways such as Alejandro believed that freedom was virtually assured because armies were offering it as a reward for service. Those beliefs were reinforced by military ofcers
and civilian courts, which, when called on to consider the issue of returning
runaways with military experience to their owners, denounced such treatment
as iniquitous and urged instead that the owner be compensated. Their public
declarations and decisions gave a clear signal that military service could lead
to freedom, providing a further impetus to run away and enlist.
Slave recruiting was most successful in the southern Viceroyalty of Rio de la
Plata. Concentrated in the coastal urban centers, slaves were not vital to the
viceroyaltys major economic activities, a fact that may have facilitated acceptance of them as soldiers. Following the May Revolution of 1810, when

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

259

American-born creoles took control of the government in Buenos Aires, some

slaveowners demonstrated their loyalty to the cause by donating slaves to the
army. Formal recruiting began in 1811, when an invading army from Buenos
Aires challenged the royalist government operating out of Montevideo. The
Argentine commander forcibly recruited the slaves of Spaniards, aiming both
to reinforce his army and to deprive the royalists of possible soldiers. He
also offered freedom to any slave living in the Uruguayan capital who enrolled
in his army. Perhaps as many as a thousand men, women, and children responded to the patriot offer, indicating their desire for freedom. Three hundred and forty joined the Argentine army. Most accompanied the army when
it withdrew to Buenos Aires later in the year, but others continued to serve in
Uruguay under several patriot commanders, most notably the Uruguayan nationalist Jos Gervasio Artigas. They so impressed him with their military
skills that he became increasingly reliant on them as he fought for the liberation of his country. A second invasion by Argentine forces in 1812 produced a
new outpouring of slave support as the invaders again offered freedom in
return for military service. The recruits had to serve four years, during which
time they remained libertos (freedmen) of the state.
The experiences in Uruguay set the stage for slave recruiting in Buenos Aires
and the other Argentine provinces. The creoles who led the May Revolution
may have expressed liberal ideas, with slavery among their targets for reform,
but they were also pragmatists who wanted to avoid racial unrest, obtain
soldiers, and deprive the royalists of black support. As a result, beginning in
February 1812 they issued a series of antislavery laws that included ending the
African slave trade and freeing the newborn children of slaves. Simultaneously, local slave recruiting began. In July 1812 the government purchased
thirty-nine slaves for a new corps of libertos, offering freedom as well as a
uniform and a small daily wage in return for six years of good service. In
May 1813 the rst recruiting law was issued; its intent was to create a Regiment of Libertos. The law was called a rescate, or rescue, imbuing it with
moral force. It compelled owners to sell a certain number of their slaves, aged
thirteen to sixty. The slaves occupation affected the chances of his selection,
with domestic slaves most likely to be recruited and rural slaves the least likely.
To ensure that property rights were recognized and protected, the value of the
chosen slave was determined and compensation offered. The recruits were
given their freedom when they enrolled, but they had to complete the designated term of ve years, leaving them in a somewhat ambiguous legal situation. Eight hundred were enrolled pursuant to the initial law, but further
military demands produced new decrees in December 1813 and February
1814 that added to the numbers. In January 1815, following rumors of the

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Peter Blanchard

imminent landing of a Spanish expeditionary force, the government targeted

the slaves belonging to Spaniards. Later in the year the same source was
compelled to provide another four hundred slaves. Further laws in 1818 and
1819 considered using slaves for patrolling the frontier and lling the ranks of
the militia. Freedom was no longer offered to the recruits, however, indicating
the growing conservatism of Argentinas rulers.
The more than two thousand slaves enlisted following passage of these laws
represented the wide spectrum of slaves who lived in the area. They were
drawn from Buenos Aires and the surrounding provinces; they were single and
married, urban and rural. Many came originally from Africa, listing themselves as natives of the Congo, Mozambique, Benguela, and other nations.
Some had indicated to their owners that they wanted to serve. In the words of
one owner, his slave Antonio was set on serving with the troops of the patria
and I cannot deny him his wish. Whether such wishes were ever really uttered
is open to question, and there is ample evidence that owners used the opportunity of the recruiting laws to unload problem slaves. The authorities were
expecting this, however, and insisted that every recruit had to be t and capable of performing military duties. To this end a surgeon checked them and
returned the unt to their owners, who had to supply a replacement. The
recruits were assigned primarily to the infantry and artillery companies of
newly formed black regiments, but they could also nd themselves in one of
the integrated regiments of the line, the navy, the cavalry, or local militia units.
They fought on various fronts and in numerous battles, defending the country
from royalist invasions in the north, participating in unsuccessful invasions of
Upper Peru, and lending their strength to the continuing struggles in Uruguay. In the process they established a reputation as dependable and effective
soldiers.
One commander who was particularly impressed was the Argentine Jos de
San Martn. More than once he noted that although whites were the best for
the cavalry, slaves make the best troops of the line, as a result of their undeniable subordination and natural readiness for hard work. Preparing an
army in the western Argentine city of Mendoza to invade Chile and eventually
to attack the royalist stronghold of Peru, he hoped to obtain as many as ten
thousand slave recruits. Political problems, competing demands, and slaveholder resistance forced him to revise his gure downwards, yet he managed to
secure almost sixteen hundred from the nearby provinces and other parts of
the country. They made up at least 40 percent of his army when it crossed the
Andes early in 1817 in a brilliant and unexpected campaign that caught the
royalist forces in Chile completely by surprise.
San Martn invaded a country where the military contribution of slaves was

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

261

less prominent than in his homeland, largely because of their small numbers
only six thousandas well as the nature of the local struggles for independence. Some were prepared to serve: a group of three hundred slaves took to
the streets of Santiago in 1811, a year after local creoles assumed control of the
government, demanding that they be given their freedom and an opportunity
to defend the new system. Subsequently laws were passed to permit slaves to
enlist in two new regiments; however, only a few seem to have responded.
Equally unsuccessful was a recruiting law issued in 1814 in response to a
royalist invasion from Peru. Runaways were willing to join, but their numbers
were too small to hold back the royalist advance and prevent the fall of the
creole government later in the year. With San Martns invasion and his victories at the battles of Chacabuco in February 1817 and Maip the following
year, recruiting of slaves was tried once again and this time attracted greater
support. Patriotic owners were now willing to donate their property, and other
sources such as jails provided further recruits. Some had fought already. Luciano, a donated slave, had accompanied his master in the ght against the
royalists starting in 1813, displaying a heroic valor in several battles. The
recruiting intensied as San Martn prepared his army to move north into
Peru, producing an invasion force with a signicant black component. According to one source, almost half the soldiers of the liberating army were
manumitted slaves.
Slaves thus played a signicant role in the southern struggle for independence. Elsewhere, however, although they participated as extensively, they
tended to be part of the resistance to independence, not its proponent. This
was particularly true of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, where for many
years slaves actively opposed the republicans and threw their support behind
the royalist cause, largely because it seemed to offer a better route to personal
freedom. In contrast to areas to the south, in New Granada slavery was central
to economic activity, providing workers for the gold mines of Colombia and
the plantations of Venezuela and Ecuador. It was not a benign system, for it
provoked numerous instances of ight and rebellion in the late colonial period
that, together with the proximity of Haiti, produced a profound fear of the
black population among the colonial elites. That fear was evident when radical creoles took over the government in Caracas in 1810 and declared Venezuelas independence the following year. Social equality was not part of their
program; they were willing to end the African slave trade, but they were not
prepared to abolish slavery or grant full citizenship to free pardos. More
confrontational was their creation of a National Guard to apprehend runaways, maintain law and order in the countryside, and compel slaves to work.
The black community responded by rebelling. Promoted by royalist agents

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Peter Blanchard

and churchmen, the racial unrest spread throughout the viceroyalty but was
especially bloody in Venezuela and soon developed a momentum of its own.
Republican landholders were especially targeted and massacred in large numbers. At the same time, forces loyal to the Crown began mobilizing slaves and
free blacks to wrest political control out of the hands of the patriots under
Francisco de Miranda, offering personal freedom as an inducement. Miranda
responded with a similar offer to those who volunteered for his armies, but he
demanded ten years of service. His offer attracted few takers, and it alienated
creole planters, who demonstrated their hostility by withdrawing their support. As a result, the republic fell in July 1812 to a royalist army that was
composed almost totally of pardos and men of the other castes, including
freed slaves.
Loyalty to the Crown remained strong among the slave population. When
the revolutionaries, now under the charismatic Venezuelan Simn Bolvar,
regained political control of Caracas in August 1813 and declared the second
republic, many slaves once again threw their support behind royalist leaders.
They were particularly drawn to Jos Toms Boves, a Spaniard who turned the
multiracial inhabitants of Venezuelas interior plains into an effective guerrilla
force. Slaves, with their owners and on their own, joined his army, attracted by
the offer of a uniform, the prospect of loot, which often took the form of the
property of whites, and the possibility of social improvement, because blacks
were promoted ahead of lighter-skinned individuals. Marching into battle
shouting Death to the whites! they killed hundreds as they retook patriotheld territory. Many subsequently asked for and received their freedom, citing
in their requests their loyalty to the Crown. One was Ramn Piero, who
declared, I have served my King with much love and faithfulness, and have no
desire to lose the favor that your sovereign mercy has conceded to those like
myself who have defended your rights with weapons in hand.
Bolvar did little to win them over. A slaveholder himself, he described the
rebelling slaves as an inhuman and atrocious people, nourishing themselves
on the blood and possessions of the patriots. He and other independence
leaders managed to draw some into their armies, including runaways, donated
slaves, and those compelled to accompany their owners, but many soon deserted, suggesting that they had different feelings of loyalty than their owners and a better appreciation of the realities of the military situation. They
switched to the royalist cause after weighing the options and deciding that it
was a more likely route to personal freedom. Bolvars defeat, largely at the
hands of black royalist forces, and the fall of the second republic in 1814
proved the astuteness of their choice.
What was occurring in Venezuela had a profound impact on neighboring

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

263

Colombia. Some of the regional creole governments that took over after 1810
made gestures in the slaves direction, the most liberal being the gold-mining
province of Antioquia, whose leaders called for gradual abolition. These abolitionist moves, however, had all ended by 1816 with the defeat of the various
independence movements. Owners, dependent on slave labor and fearful of
slave unrest, generally opposed slave recruiting, and commanders hesitated to
arm them. Campaigning in the south in 1813, the independence leader Antonio Nario was prepared to use hacienda slaves, and offered them their
freedom if they served him with honour, but they were to serve as laborers,
not soldiers. In this role, they provided invaluable support when royalist
forces defeated his army, for it was the slaves who managed to save the muskets, powder, and cartridges that permitted an orderly retreat. Without this
help we certainly would have surrendered and perished, a participant observed. But it was not sufcient to prevent Nario from being captured and
imprisoned and this initial attempt at independence from being crushed.
The arrival of Pablo Morillo in 1815 with a Spanish army of more than ten
thousand men altered the pattern of royalist recruiting in the viceroyalty. The
presence of the Spanish veterans seemed to limit the need for locally recruited
soldiers, and the recruiting of slaves was specically halted in an attempt to
end the continuing racial unrest. The royalists tried to maintain black support
by abolishing the slave trade, introducing a gradual emancipation scheme, and
granting freedom to those of Boves troops who had been slaves, but his army
was disarmed and dispersed. (Boves was no longer a factor, having died in
battle in 1814.) Although the manner of the disbanding and the anticolonial
attitudes of Morillos forces prompted a number of Boves veterans to switch
allegiance to the patriots, most remained committed to the royalist cause and
were prepared to serve if given the chance. The door was not completely
closed to their participation because some slaves, such as those who had
fought for the insurgents, were welcomed into the royalist army and given
their freedom when they enlisted. Runaways also continued to join. Morillo
was prepared to accept them, but, like Nario, he seemed interested primarily in using them as laborersfor carrying and moving equipment such as
artillerynot as combatants.
While the royalists reduced their black contingent, the patriots began making renewed efforts to attract slave support. Bolvar remained suspicious of
their loyalty, but military exigencies and his passionate desire to free his homeland forced him gradually to change his attitude. He came to the realization
that military victory was impossible if the black population continued to oppose him. As a result, in exchange for essential supplies, he promised the
Haitian president, Alexandre Ption, that he would free all the slaves in the

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Peter Blanchard

lands that he liberated, and in June 1816 he offered freedom to slaves aged
fourteen to sixty who joined his army. But there was an iron st beneath the
offer: those who refused to serve faced the prospect of perpetual servitude, not
only for themselves but also for their families and parents. At the time, the
offer had little impact because the patriots limited political control placed few
slaves under their jurisdiction. Nonetheless, the cause of independence had
improved somewhat. Boves death had both removed an effective enemy commander and shifted the loyalties of some blacks, largely because the new leader
of the interior guerrillas was Jos Antonio Pez, a supporter of independence.
Slave unrest continued, but it no longer focused on patriot creoles with the
erce hostility that it had in the past. In 1817 Bolvar sought to prevent racial divisions in his own forces by ordering the execution of Manuel Piar, a
mulatto commander who was suspected of plotting an antiwhite movement.
The Liberators fear of the black population had obviously not diminished,
and he frequently criticized slaves for their lack of support. Yet by 1818 he and
other patriot leaders were beginning to attract them in sufcient numbers to
cause Morillo to comment that in some areas all the slaves remain at the
disposition of the rebels who enlist many of them. The royalist commander
had also begun recruiting plantation slaves, in part to prevent the enemy from
using them, in part because disease and desertion were ravaging his Spanish
army, and in part because his attitude toward slaves had changed since his
arrival in Venezuela. He now considered them excellent soldiers, noting
their discipline and their ability to cope with the climate. In 1818 he claimed
that two thousand were serving him, and he was keen to draft more because
slaves remained largely committed to the royalist cause. Loyalty to the king
was much more tangible than loyalty to concepts as vague as independence
and the patria. Moreover, Bolvar had still to prove that he could defeat the
royalists.
In order to achieve that victory, the Venezuelan decided to take a radical
step where slavery was concerned. Despite his continuing reservations about
the black population and his continuing ownership of slavesboth of which
raise questions about the sincerity of his wordsthe Liberator became an
open and vocal foe of slavery. At the Congress of Angostura, convened in
February 1819 to draft a constitution for his planned northern republic, he
called for the complete abolition of slavery. His reasoning was summed up in
his oft-cited comment to his vice president, Francisco de Paula Santander: It
seems to me madness that a revolution for freedom expects to maintain slavery. But slaves had to risk their lives to obtain their freedom. Following the
battle of Boyac in August 1819, which secured Colombias independence, he
asked Santander to supply two or three thousand slaves who would serve for

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two or three years. We need robust and vigorous men, men accustomed to
harshness and fatigue, men who embrace the cause and the career with enthusiasm, men who identify their interest with the public interest and for whom
the price of death is little different from that of life, he wrote. He preferred
bachelors and residents of lowland Colombia who would be able to cope with
the heat of Venezuela. Santanders efforts provided some recruits, but Bolvars
wishes conicted with the economic demands of the region. The slaves themselves also remained less than wholly convinced, so that although the number
of recruits grew, including deserters from the royalist forces, they were still
prepared to switch sides if the patriots faltered. Fortunately for Bolvar, divisions within the royalist ranks resulting from political chaos in Spain and the
declaration of a truce in the colonies gave him an opportunity to launch a new
offensive in Venezuela. His victory at the battle of Carabobo in June 1821
sealed the fate of the north. His appeal for slave support had obviously paid
dividends, for according to one observer the majority of both the patriot and
the royalist forces at Carabobo had been composed of black soldiers. Bolvar
sought to expand this support by implementing his plans to abolish slavery in
the new nation of Gran Colombia, created from the old viceroyalty. Less
liberal congressional representatives, however, frustrated his wishes. Nevertheless, he managed to ensure that the African slave trade was abolished and
that a free womb law was in place. He also established a manumission fund to
purchase slaves freedom, giving priority to those who enlisted. Some of these,
along with volunteers and draftees, joined his victorious army as it moved
southward, mopping up the royalist forces in Ecuador and preparing to advance on Peru, the last bastion of royalist power.
Peru, like New Granada, boasted a substantial number of slaves, but they
played a minor role in the struggles before San Martns invasion in 1820.
Royalist recruiters had largely ignored them because the existing military
forces had proved adequate not only to control the area but also to suppress
separatist movements in Chile and Ecuador and to prevent Argentine armies
from invading through Bolivia. Nevertheless, a few slaves, runaways and volunteers, had joined the royalist forces. One was Pedro Rosas, whose 1798
marriage certicate described him as a slave of the Congo caste. He had subsequently obtained his freedom and in 1811 offered his services to the royalist forces, ghting in several campaigns in Bolivia until his death in battle
in 1814.
Extensive slave recruiting began in the area with the arrival of the patriot
forces. The commander of the Chilean navy, Admiral Thomas Cochrane, took
the rst recruits, slaves who were abducted to supplement the crews of ships
that were patrolling the Peruvian coast. With San Martns invasion, Cochrane

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Peter Blanchard

returned to his earlier landings and used his recruits to win over relatives and
friends to the patriot side. In the following months San Martns recruiting
efforts, as well as his antislavery reputation, attracted large numbers, so that
by January 1822 the majority of his army of forty-eight hundred men was said
to be composed of slaves. Indeed, at least one observer believed that his entire army was composed of slaves. Serving as soldiers, sailors, artillerymen,
guides, and spies, they were confronted by other slaves who wore the uniforms
of royalist units, enlisted at the behest of the Peruvian viceroy. He wanted
fteen hundred recruits, men who were agile, robust, and of a middling age,
men who would be freed at the end of the war and their owners compensated. San Martns previous efforts, however, limited the numbers available
to the royalists. Moreover, many of the royalist recruits soon deserted and
joined the enemy, indicating their views as to the more dominant side and
forcing the viceroy to turn to Andean Indians to meet his needs. San Martns
appeal lay in cultivating slave support following the Argentine pattern. He
introduced legislation freeing the newborn children of slaves and abolishing
the African slave trade. In response to threatened royalist attacks and military
requirements, he specically called up slaves and freed some as a reward. He
recruited the slaves of royalists who had left Peru and ordered that all slaves
receive militia training. Many of these laws were soon revoked in the face of
slaveholder opposition and San Martns wish not to alienate masters and
disrupt the economy, yet his army continued to enroll donated slaves, deserters, and runaways. At one point it was reported to have almost two thousand new slave recruits in training.
These Peruvian recruits were among the soldiers who fought in the deciding
battles that brought an end to Spanish rule in Peru and on the continent as a
whole. In addition to the local slaves were the survivors of those brought from
Argentina and Chile as well as the black soldiers from Gran Colombia who
were part of the army that Bolvar led into Peru following San Martns resignation and the Venezuelans assumption of command in 1823. Facing them
were other slaves ghting under the royalist banners. They were part of the
multinational and multiethnic armies that fought at the battles of Junn and
Ayacucho in highland Peru in 1824. Victorious, the patriots could nally and
condently declare all of Spanish South America free, even if the last royalist
forces would not withdraw until 1826.
Slaves had served militarily in much of the continent for more than a decade, helping both to maintain royalist rule and to undermine it. In the process, they had shown that they were competent and effective soldiers and
not simply cannon fodder. Commanders as diverse as San Martn, Artigas,
and Morillo had turned to them because of their recognized qualities. After

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

267

years of service many were experienced veterans and thus even more valuable,
prompting efforts to retain their services. When one slave recruit from Buenos
Aires asked for his discharge after serving his required period of duty, his
superiors had to comply, but they expressed the hope that he would consider
reenlisting because they did not wish to lose a good soldier. The bravery and
commitment of the slave recruits had also been evident on numerous occasions on the battleeld. Antonio Lima, a runaway in the Argentine forces,
fought in several battles and in one carried his captain to safety despite being
shot in the knee. Captured, he managed to escape and returned to his unit. His
sergeant described him as one of the best soldiers in the corps. Occasionally the recruits exhibited the savagery that for ages had provoked fear
among whites and more recently stimulated recruiter enthusiasm. The conict
in Venezuela provides the most obvious but not the only example. In Chile, at
the battle of Maip, fought in April 1818, an observer noted that nothing
could exceed the savage fury of the Black soldiers in the patriot army; they had
borne the brunt of the action against the nest Spanish regiment and had lost
the principal part of their forces; they were delighted with the idea of shooting
their prisoners. I saw an old Negro actually crying with rage when he perceived the ofcers protected from his fury.
On the whole, however, blacks appear to have been no more or less brave,
no more or less bloodthirsty than any other soldiers. Indeed, some commanders, such as the Argentine Manuel Belgrano, were extremely critical of them
for their timidity. Writing to San Martn in 1813, he complained, rather contradictorily, that the blacks and mulattos are a rabble who are as cowardly as
they are bloodthirsty; in the ve engagements that I have had with them, they
have been the rst to break ranks and to search for walls of bodies [to hide].
Belgrano may have been trying to divert attention from his own military
failings, but his characterization was not entirely without foundation, for the
slave recruits had obvious reasons to avoid battle. They had sought military
service as a means to obtain their freedom, not to get wounded, captured, or
killed. Their underlying motivation thus acted against bloodthirsty or valorous acts. The strategy of many seemed to be to get recruited, which secured
their freedom, but then to minimize the possibility of injury. Asking for release on the basis of illness or physical ineptitude was one option (although
it was far less common than seeking release for wartime injuries). Another
was simply to desert. Desertion plagued every commander during the struggles for independence, a reection of the dangers and the miserable conditions
faced by the soldiers regardless of nationality or racial background. Ofcers
everywhere reported losing troops at recruitment, during training, on campaign marches, before battles, and particularly after them, when soldiers took

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Peter Blanchard

advantage of the breakdown in discipline, especially if they were part of the

defeated army. To try to control the problem, armies offered rewards, employed bounty hunters, and imposed various penalties including imprisonment, whipping, extra years of service, reenslavement for ex-slaves, and even
capital punishment. None, however, proved successful in keeping soldiers in
the ranks.
In a way, the desertions, like running away to enlist, were part of the increased slave assertiveness that marked the war years. The widespread destruction of property and the ight and death of owners left countless slaves
on their own, and as armies began turning to them, they discovered a sense of
power. Recruits obtained their own freedom and then used their status, as
well as the wages they earned, to free family members. In Argentina, for
example, soldiers directed part of their pay to be used for this purpose. At the
same time, association with soldiers empowered many female slaves. Some
accompanied their husbands or lovers as camp followers and demanded their
freedom in return for their contribution. Many more made demands on the
new governments, requesting the wages of their menfolk, or pensions, or
charity in cases where the soldier had been killed or left an invalid as a result of
wartime injuries. The passage of antislavery legislation also mobilized them
into making demands on the state. In one case, an Ecuadorian slave took her
request for freedom directly to Bolvar. Other slaves resorted to more disruptive acts. The unrest that marked the war years in Venezuela was replicated on
a lesser scale elsewhere and continued long after the wars had ended. Slaves
were accused of running away, assaulting owners, stealing, and joining the
bands of highwaymen who infested rural roads. A common complaint was
that they were acting as if they were free.
Yet despite the slaves activism, the freeing of recruits, and the extensive
antislavery legislation of the independence era, slavery survived the wars in all
but one of the former colonies. (The exception was Chile, where a combination of small slave numbers and the liberalism of the new government produced an abolition decree in 1823.) How did slavery manage to resist the
wartime challenges? The most obvious reason was that these were wars of
independence, not wars of abolition. Even slaves who enlisted to obtain their
personal freedom very rarely if ever declared that the ght for freeing their
countries should extend to freeing the slaves. Bolvar may have adopted abolition as a goal, but his was a lonely voice, drowned out by the pro-slavery
chorus. There were no recognized black leaders who might have pressed the
abolitionist cause because some, like Piar, did not survive the wars, and others
were in no position to take on the role afterwards. Only a small proportion of
those recruited returned home. Casualties were high, and others chose not to

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

269

return, in some cases because they were runaways or deserters. Of the returnees, many found themselves in the courts after the wars, often for years,
resisting former owners who had reclaimed them. Numerous recruits had
been so seriously wounded that they were left reliant on their families or
public charity for maintenance. Slaves in Gran Colombia believed they did not
need to resort to militant action because they had the manumission law, which
seemed to offer a route to freedom, although few actually beneted. Finally,
the black population was not a united community that might have pressed the
issue of abolition. They had fought on opposing sides during the wars, and
even those on the same side in the patriot armies had divided along national
lines, Chileans versus Argentines, Colombians versus Peruvians, and so on.
These divisions now intensied as the independence struggles unleashed centrifugal forces that led to renewed ghting, with contending groups struggling for control of the new nations. In Argentina ghting between federalists
and centralists began before the wars of independence ended and lasted for
decades. In Venezuela, liberals and conservatives engaged in frequent postindependence rebellions. In both cases slaves were recruited to serve in the new
armies. Wars between states led to further recruiting. In Uruguay slaves helped
defeat Brazilian troops and win Uruguayan independence in 1828. In the
north, when Peru sought to challenge Bolvars rule by declaring war on Gran
Colombia in 1827, Bolivarian forces included slaves. In the following years
donated slaves and runaways continued to make their way into the ranks of
local armies despite prohibitions against their recruitment. As long as freedom
was offered, slaves could be secured, although it was no longer offered with
the frequency of the past because the number of slaves was falling and their
average age was rising. Moreover, slaveholders wanted to hold on to their
increasingly scarce property, and alternative soldiers were available. Slave
recruiting consequently declined as slavery became increasingly moribund.
Yet in at least one case slaves were called upon to serve once again and in
doing so played a direct role in determining the actual date of abolition. In
1854 the president of Peru found his authority reduced to a small part of the
country by the latest in a long series of civil wars. Desperate to reverse his
fortunes, in November he offered freedom to any slave who enlisted in his
forces for two years and extended the offer to their spouses. In response, the
rebel leader and former president, Ramn Castilla, a man who claimed to
represent liberal values, on December 3 issued a decree freeing every slave
except those who took up arms against him. The offer attracted as many as
three thousand recruits, and Castillas military success early the following year
opened the way for the nationwide application of his abolition decree.
The 1850s almost saw the end of slavery in what had been Spanish South

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Peter Blanchard

America, the conclusion of a process that had begun with the wars of independence and the acceptance of slaves as combatants. Throughout the continent
slaves had been brought into the military process, aiding in the freeing of their
nations. That involvement had also served to weaken the institution that controlled them because the recruiting of slaves and their military service not only
freed thousands but also changed attitudes. It aroused slaves who were noncombatants and it forced a reconsideration of the issue of slavery. Slavery was
too well entrenched an institution for it to die with colonial rule, and the antislavery forces during the war years were not sufciently strong, united, and
focused to end slavery at that time, but the abolitionist process had begun.
Recruiting after the wars further challenged the institution until nally slavery came to an end. Slave soldiers throughout the continent had done much
to achieve this, although there are few memorials that pay tribute to their
contribution.
Notes
1. Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 15241650 (Stanford,
1974), 97100, 196197; Allan J. Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 17731808 (Gainesville, 1978); Stephen K. Stoan, Pablo Morillo and Venezuela,
18151820 (Columbus, 1974), 17.
2. Ildefonso Pereda Valds, El negro en el Uruguaypasado y presente (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1965), 45, 46, 244248; Marta B. Goldberg and Silvia C. Mallo, La
poblacin africana en Buenos Aires y su campaa: Formas de vida y subsistencia (1750
1850), Temas de Africa y Asia 2 (1993): 17, 20; John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan
Manuel de Rosas, 18291852 (Oxford, 1981), 119; Kuethe, Military Reform, 29; John
Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 18081826, 2nd ed. (New York, 1986), 191;
David G. Browning and David J. Robinson, The Origin and Comparability of Peruvian
Population Data: 17761815, Jahrbuch 14 (1977): 211.
3. Jos Marcial Ramos Gudez, La insureccin de los esclavos negros de Coro en
1795: Algunas ideas en torno a posibles inuencias de la revolucin francesa, Revista
Universitaria de Ciencias del Hombre 2:2 (1989): 103116; Jorge I. Domnguez, Insurrection or Loyalty: The Breakdown of the Spanish American Empire (Cambridge, MA,
1980), 99; Paulo de Carvalho-Neto, El negro uruguayo (hasta la abolicin) (Quito,
Ecuador, 1965), 96.
4. Tulio Halpern-Donghi, Politics, Economics and Society in Argentina in the Revolutionary Period, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge, UK, 1975), 132.
5. George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 18001900 (Madison, 1980), 43, 9495.
6. Archivo General de la Nacin, Buenos Aires, Argentina (hereafter AGN-BA),
Guerra, Rescate de esclavos, 18131817, X-43-6-7.
7. Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial
Americas (New York, 1993), chs. 16, 2122.

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

271

8. El Seor Procurador Municipal en defensa de Alexandro Campusano, esclavo,

sobre se le declare exento del servicio de esclavitud, Archivo Histrico del Guayas,
Guayaquil, Ecuador (hereafter AHG-G), 1826, no. 5996.
9. Andrews, Afro-Argentines, 39, 4245, 4748, 127, 132135; Carvalho-Neto, El
negro uruguayo, 94; Halpern-Donghi, Politics, 190226; AGN-BA, Solicitudes Militares (hereafter Sol. Mil.), 1815, X-8-7-6.
10. Gaceta de Buenos Aires, 19 July 1810; La morena Juliana Garca, esclava que
fu de Don Pedro Garca, reclamando su libertad, 1818, AGN-BA, Administrativos,
legajo (hereafter leg.) 33, expediente (hereafter exp.) 1179, IX-23-8-7; AGN-BA, Gobierno, Correspondencia del Gobierno de Buenos Aires con Elo y Vigodet, 18101814,
X-1-5-10; AGN-BA, Representantes de la Junta, Castelli y Belgrano, Ejrcito del Norte y
Banda Oriental, X-3-2-4, Guerra, 18111816, X-3-2-3; AGN-BA, Sol. Mil., 1815,
X-8-7-6; Homero Martnez Montero, El soldado negro, in Carvalho-Neto, El negro
uruguayo, 273274.
11. Argentina, Registro ocial de la repblica argentina que comprende los documentos expedidos desde 1810 hasta 1872 (Buenos Aires, 1879), 1:168, 179, 194, 200
201, 221, 249250, 328, 378, 383, 390394; Rafael M. Castellano Senz Cavia, La
abolicin de la esclavitud en las Provincias Unidas del Rio de la Plata (18101860),
Revista de Historia del Derecho 9 (1981): 90108; AGN-BA, Cuerpo de libertos, Compra de esclavos por el estado, 18121814, III-37-3-22.
12. AGN-BA, Guerra, Rescate de esclavos, 18131817, X-43-6-7, Rescate de esclavos certicados, 18131817, X-43-6-8, Rescate de esclavos: Listas y ordenes del pago,
18161817, X-43-6-9; Andrews, Afro-Argentines, 48.
13. Jos Luis Masini, La esclavitud negra en Mendoza: Epoca independiente (Mendoza, Argentina, 1962), 18.
14. Andrews, Afro-Argentines, 117; Masini, La esclavitud negra, 1834.
15. Guillermo Feli Cruz, La abolicin de la esclavitud en Chile: Estudio histrico y
social, 2nd ed. (Santiago, Chile, 1973), 32, 33, 46, 5057, 128, ch. 10; Nria Sales de
Bohigas, Sobre esclavos, reclutas y mercaderes de quintos (Barcelona, 1974), 64, 76; Jos
Antonio Ovalle y Vivanco to Sup. Director, September 5, 1817, Antonio Urrutia y
Mendiburu to Junta Delegado, December 13, 1817, Archivo Nacional, Santiago, Chile,
Provincia de Santiago i sus Departamentos, 1817 a 1828, Ministerio de Guerra, tomo 18,
Intendencia, Santiago, vol. 1, 18171825, nos. 12, 41, 43, 98, 121, 173.
16. Jos Cevallos to Secretario de Estado y del Departamento Universal de Indias, July
22, 1815, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter AGI), Caracas 109; Lynch,
Spanish American Revolutions, 190199; Domnguez, Insurrection, 47, 174176, 238;
John V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 18201854
(Westport, 1971), 3739; Stoan, Pablo Morillo, 31, 35, 3839.
17. Libertad de Ramn Piero, esclavo del Dr. Don Juan de Roxas, Archivo de la
Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas, Venezuela (hereafter AANH-C), CivilesEsclavos, tomo 1815-OP, exp. 5; Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 204207; Domnguez, Insurrection, 177178; Stoan, Pablo Morillo, 5157.
18. Simn Bolvar, Obras Completas (Caracas, n.d.), 3:574.
19. Lino Rodrgues, sargento, pide se le declare libre de servidumbre por sus servicios
puestados a la Repblica, AANH-C, Civiles-Esclavos, tomo 1825-BCGJMPRT, exp. 7;

272

Peter Blanchard

Juan Jos Ledesma, esclavo de Don Pedro Ledesma, solicitando se le de la libertad por
haber militado en el Ejrcito de su Majestad, AANH-C, Civiles-Esclavos, tomo 1815LM, exp. 1.
20. El Sindico Procurador General solicita la libertad de various esclavos, 1815,
Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, Bogot, Colombia, libro 331, no. 987, fol. 114, and
Juan Francisco Cicero, esclavo de Hacienda Saldaa, libro 329, no. 961, fol. 103; Brian
Hamnett, Popular Insurrection and Royalist Reaction: Colombian Regions, 1810
1823, in Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru, ed. John R.
Fisher, Allan J. Kuethe, and Anthony McFarlane (Baton Rouge, 1990), 310.
21. Domnguez, Insurrection, 210; Stoan, Pablo Morillo, 67, 68, 7172, 75, 112;
Archivo General de la Nacin, Bogot, Colombia (hereafter AGN-B), Archivo Anexo,
Solicitudes, tomo 5, fol. 45.
22. Morillo to Juan Bautista Pardo, June 11, 1818, AGN-B, Archivo Restrepo, caja 9,
fondo I, vol. 21, fol. 195.
23. Vicente Lecuna, comp., and Harold A. Bierck Jr., ed., Selected Writings of Bolvar,
trans. Lewis Bertrand (New York, 1951), 1:131; Correo del Orinoco, Angostura, October 28, 1818, no. 14; Stoan, Pablo Morillo, 212213; Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 210215; Jaime E. Rodrguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 185186.
24. Cartas Santander-Bolvar, 18131820 (Bogot, 1988), 2:137.
25. Ibid., 2:87.
26. Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima, July 28, 1825, no. 8; Cartas Santander-Bolvar,
2:12, 64, 224227, 319323; Francisco del Pino to Minister of War, January 1, 1821,
AGI, Caracas 55; Don Juan Pablo Ayala para el Intendente solicita se le devuelvan dos
esclavos pertenecientes a su hermano, que fueron empleados para el servicio de las armas, Caracas, September 6, 1822, Archivo General de la Nacin, Caracas, Venezuela,
Gran Colombia, Intendencia de Venezuela, tomo CVI, fol. 16, and Representacin del
seor Juan Jos Lander al intendente, Caracas, May 6, 1822, Gran Colombia, Intendencia de Venezuela, tomo IV, fol. 338.
27. Sales de Bohigas, Sobre esclavos, 105; Expediente promovido ante el Superior
Gobierno por Doa Mara del Carmn Gmez, Archivo General de la Nacin, Lima,
Peru (hereafter AGN-L), Superior Gobierno, 1818, leg. 36, cuaderno 1268.
28. Timothy E. Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Peru (Lincoln, 1979), 196,
202.
29. Alistamiento de negros, Biblioteca Nacional, Lima, Peru, Virreynato, February
18, 1821, D5985.
30. Archivo Histrico Militar, Lima, Peru (hereafter AHM-L), Correspondencia de
Ministerio de Guerra y Marina con los Jefes del Ejrcito Unido, 1822/23, J4, and Copiador Correspondencia del Ministro de Guerra y Marina, 1821/22, L2; AGN-L, O.L.
92-10; John Miller, Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru, 2nd
ed. (London, 1829), 1:219, 287288, 305; Anna, Fall of the Royal Government, 151,
196197; Sales de Bohigas, Sobre esclavos, 109116; Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 276.
31. AGN-BA, Sol. Mil., 1815, X-8-7-5, and 1819, X-11-1-7.
32. Samuel Haigh, Sketches of Buenos Ayres, Chile, and Peru (London, 1831), 235.

Slave Soldiers of Spanish South America

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33. Argentina, Biblioteca de mayo. Coleccin de obras y documentos para la historia

argentina. Guerra de la independencia (Buenos Aires, 1963), 15:13278.
34. AGN-BA, Guerra, 18111816, X-3-2-3, and 18151816, X-39-8-5; AGN-BA,
Rescate de esclavos, 18131817, X-43-6-7; AGN-BA, Sol. Mil., 1813, X-6-9-1, and
1817, X-10-1-1; AHM-L, leg. 7, nos. 317, 327, leg. 33, no. 8, leg. 39, no. 52; Archivo
Histrico Municipal Camilo Destruge, Guayaquil, Ecuador, Causas Militares, 1822
1829, no. 49; Lecuna and Bierck, Selected Writings, 2:412; Andrews, Afro-Argentines,
117; Dominguez, Insurrection, 211213.
35. Lombardi, Decline, 46.
36. Solicitando carta de libertad, AGN-BA, Administrativos, leg. 33, exp. 1144,
IX-23-8-7; AGN-BA, Sol. Mil., 18141815, X-35-7-7, 1815, X-8-7-5, X-8-7-6, and
1818, X-10-9-5; AGN-BA, Solicitudes Civiles y Militares, 1816, X-9-2-4; Archivo Nacional del Ecuador, Quito, Esclavos, caja 23, 18251830, exps. 3, 6; Camilla Townsend,
Half my body free, the other half enslaved: The Politics of the Slaves of Guayas at the
End of the Colonial Era, Colonial Latin American Review 7:1 (1998): 105128; Lecuna
and Bierck, Selected Writings, 2:512; Andrews, Afro-Argentines, 34; Peter Blanchard,
Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru (Wilmington, 1992), 12.
37. Andrews, Afro-Argentines, 117, 118, 120127; Bowles to Croker, no. 113 Secret,
October 3, 1818, Admiralty les 1/23, and Campbell to Canning, no. 102, October 7,
1826, Foreign Ofce les 18/28, Public Record Ofce, London.
38. Lynch, Argentine Dictator, 122; Lombardi, Decline, 130131; Martnez Montero, El soldado negro, 280282; AGN-B, Colecciones, fondo E.O.R., caja 15, carpeta
56, fol. 9; El Seor Jos Santa-Coloma reclama la entrega de su esclavo Pedro Franco, y
acredita su buena conducta, AHG-G, 1830, no. 501.
39. Blanchard, Slavery, 190200.

Armed Slaves and the Struggles for

Republican Liberty in the U.S. Civil War
joseph p. reidy

At the start of the Civil War, most free inhabitants of the North and the
South presumed that white men would settle the momentous issues that had
fractured the Union. The rhetoric of preserving the Union on one side and
winning independence on the other aimed to energize the respective white
populations for the sacrices that lay ahead. In the United States, black mens
clamoring for a war against slavery fell on deaf ears, as did their offers of
service in that cause. From the standpoint of federal ofcials, the black population would not affect the outcome of the contest. In the Confederate States,
few failed to appreciate how enslaved African Americans would contribute to
the overall mobilization as unskilled eld hands and laborers, growing foodstuffs, transporting military goods, and otherwise working to support soldiers
in the eld and civilians on the home front. But even fewer took the potentially
subversive stance of advocating the arming of slaves in pursuit of Confederate
independence. On both sides of the contest, citizens and policymakers alike
clung to traditional assumptions about racial roles. Arms in the hands of
slaves violated the rules of civilized warfare, threatening wholesale slave revolt
and a descent into barbarism.
Reality soon encroached on these assumptions, and the momentum of
events carried partisans and casual observers alike in new and unforeseen
directions. In the Confederacy, several hundred enslaved men (and perhaps

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one or two thousand free men) had served in state and Confederate military
units by wars end. It is likely that one or two hundred thousand free and
enslaved men (most of them the latter) provided direct support to Confederate
armed forces in the capacity of servants, teamsters, and military laborers.
Although the men enlisted as soldiers saw little action and consequently contributed little to the outcome, there can be little doubt that the laborers contributed signicantly to the Confederate war effort.
On the Union side of the contest, about 200,000 African Americans served
in uniform in the army and the navy, and tens of thousands more labored in
support of federal forces over the course of the war. The majority of the
enlisteesperhaps 130,000 of the 179,000 soldiers and 10,000 of the nearly
18,000 sailorshad been enslaved at the start of the war. The Unions African American soldiers and sailors played a signicantsome have argued
decisiverole in defeating the Confederacy and preserving the Union. Dispelling the doubts of their critics, they acquitted themselves well in battle and
served faithfully in every capacity. By the end of the war, black units such as
the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry returned home to heroes welcomes.
The veterans helped energize the postwar struggle for equal rights that, among
other things, resulted in passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments.
These achievements notwithstanding, the heroic model of African American military service does not adequately describe the complexity of the experience during the war or its variable effects after the war, even on the Union side.
Men who were either born free or who had been freed before the war and who
served in regiments recruited in the northern states experienced a very different war from that of formerly enslaved men recruited from the slave states.
Although these regiments often served together and fraternized, the key episodes that have become emblematic of the black military experience during
the Civil Warin no small measure thanks to the lm Glory, which depicts
the service of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteersinvolve northern
units consisting largely of free men. To be sure, not all freeborn men shared the
fruits of northern victory equally. But the freedmen from the loyal border
states and the Confederate States experienced a different war and returned
home to a different reception from that which greeted the freemen from the
northern states. Assessing the former slaves Civil War requires a different
measure from the heroic one that ts the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth.
Confederate designs for the use of African American manpower followed
traditional lines. Leaders simply assumed that enslaved menwho constituted approximately one-third of the adult men in the seceded stateswould

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sustain the production of goods and the provision of services in the civilian
economy, as they had from the introduction of slavery more than two centuries earlier. Men of unmixed European descentslave masters, nonslaveholding yeoman farmers, and urban artisans and laborerswould carry the
banner of independence into battle with the Yankees. Such a division of labor
would support both the political ideology and the material requirements of the
cause. Although leaders understood the need for increased vigilance on the
home front, they voiced no specic fears of either rebellion or sabotage. Slaves
would continue to do as directed, even if women gave the orders.
A number of Confederate citizens advanced proposals for arming the slaves
early in the war and not only during its nal year, when widespread manpower
shortages required consideration of the option. The boldest considered this a
necessary rst step in the overall mobilization, one that would pay dividends
on the home front as well as the battleeld. One proposed a selective mobilization say ten or twenty placed promiscuously in each company to relieve the
threat of unrest at home and to assist in whipping the black republicans.
Although some judged the reasoning as nave, proponents of the view argued
that involving young black men in the ght on the side of the Confederacy
would minimize the potential for mischief on the plantations at a time when
manpower and resources were diverted to the war effort and police controls
over the enslaved population correspondingly loosened.
During the rst two years of the war, as Confederate armies more than held
their own against those of the United States, neither military nor political
leaders considered a mass mobilization of black men under arms. At the same
time, however, a considerable if often underestimated mobilization of black
men laboring in military support capacities began. Confederate ofcers (like
their Union counterparts) received allotments for body servants. Ofcers from
slaveholding families frequently took young men from their slave force to serve
in this capacity. Enlisted men who owned slaves often did the same, without
the benet of an allowance. Such servants typically cooked and served, cleaned
laundry, tended horses and mules, and performed related camp chores. Surviving photographs often depict these servants, at times clothed in Confederate
uniforms and bearing arms. A smaller and less conspicuous mobilization of
slave women also helped lighten the soldiers camp chores.
The extent to which camp servants took part in armed conicts with Union
forces remains unclear. Although evidence to prove or disprove this contention denitively has been elusive, two elements bear attention. First, Confederate military camps may have fostered a spirit of camaraderie sufciently strong
to prompt such action on the part of African American men. To the extent that

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volunteer companies consisted of relatives and neighbors, the soldiers and the
servants may have created a semblance of homehierarchically structured, to
be sure, but familiar for that very reasonthat the enslaved men may have
helped defend from hostile Yankee re. Second, in the circumstance of surprise
attacks, when shots rang out, the impulse of self-protection may well have
prompted all menblack as well as white, enslaved as well as freeto employ weapons defensively against Union forces. The testimony of federal soldiers makes reference to such encounters, but on balance they appear to have
had little impact on the outcome of military actions.
The auxiliary service of enslaved African Americans served as a doubleedged sword. On one side, such service contributed signicantly to the eld
effectiveness of Confederate armies. But, on the other side, it tended to undermine slavery in the areas in which the armies operated. As early as May 1862,
a Virginia slaveholder complained that Confederate troops employ runaway
negroes to cook for the mess, clean their horses, and so forth, thereby encouraging others to seek a safe harbour in the army. Soldiers rarely rebuffed
black mens offers to tend their camps and cook their meals. Nor did they
examine too scrupulously the claims of a mans free birth or his masters
permission to be absent from home. In some cases, the carelessness aimed
deliberately to spite masters for whom the war was more of an abstraction
than a reality; in other cases, the desire simply to gain relief from the tedium of
camp chores gured most prominently. Such actions laid bare the slaveholders inability to provide for their people and to exert authority over them even
while compromising the efcacy of slavery and its legitimacy as the foundation
for Confederate independence.
Confederate naval forces also took advantage of enslaved black manpower.
Prior to the war, black men had provided much of the unskilled labor associated with the maritime industry in the South. Although the bulk of the labor
entailed loading and unloading ships, black men also worked on the vessels
that plied the coastal and inland waterways. With the outbreak of hostilities
and the organization of Confederate naval forces, ofcials rst banned the
enlistment of free black men but later authorized their limited use, in numbers
not to exceed one-twentieth of a ships complement. The small number of
commissioned Confederate naval vessels to some extent disguises the navys
reliance on slaves as pilots and as seamen and deck hands on supply vessels.
Ship owners often leased both vessel and their enslaved crewmen to Confederate or state authorities. The notable case of Robert Smalls illustrates. By
managing to seize the supply vessel Planter, steam past the fortications at
the mouth of Charleston harbor, and surrender to the Unions blockading

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squadron, Smalls and his comrades achieved freedom and national notoriety.
More than any other single episode, this incident revealed the Confederacys
dependence on the services of enslaved watermen.
The Confederate attempt to mobilize free black men enjoyed checkered
success at best. Free blacks numbering in the thousands served in support
capacities as military laborers, teamsters, and the like throughout the Confederacy. Often part of defensive mobilizations in advance of Union military operations, these men were pressed into service involuntarily and felt little if any
enthusiasm for the cause. By 1864, the impressments created a considerable
police problem by virtue of the mens penchant for desertingnot so much to
seek Yankee protection as to return home. For the remainder of the war,
Confederate military authorities matched wits with impressed free black men.
Although men of African descent served the Confederacy under arms, determining their exact numbers remains a difcult task and determining their
complex motives even more so. Individual free black men volunteered for
military duty in every one of the Confederate states, and it is likely that hundreds actually served. In the states that bordered the Gulf of Mexico, where
the tradition of free black militia service had originated under French and
Spanish auspices during the colonial period, the numbers were signicantly
higher, particularly during the rst year of the war. In Louisiana, state ofcials
mobilized the antebellum militia of gens de couleur, whose various local units
numbered several thousand men. The intensity of these mens support for the
Confederacy varied considerably depending on their wealth and social standing, the strength of their ties with white benefactors, and the gains they expected to realize from service. As for the units raised in southern Louisiana,
the Union occupation of New Orleans in the spring of 1862 enabled them to
shed their allegiance to the rebellion. Incompletely organized under state ofcials, the free black militiamen had a negligible impact on the overall Confederate mobilization. Federal military planners took more systematic advantage
of their service and eventually built a considerable force of African-descended
soldiers around the core of the antebellum militia units.
By 1863, as Confederate military fortunes began to ag, Confederate leaders reopened the question of the wholesale military service of enslaved men. In
the mid-summer of 1863, a Mississippi slaveholder urged President Jefferson
Davis to avert Confederate defeat by calling out every able-bodied Negro
man of military age, condent that the men wished to join in the frollick
and would all go to the enemy if not taken to our own army: Away with all
squeamesness [sic] about employing negroes in civilized warfare, he exhorted
Davis, yet Confederate ofcials feared the political repercussions of such a
step. As they faced growingif not necessarily universalshortages of

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food, war materials, and men, they had to balance military necessity against
popular opinion. For another year, the potential risks involved in arming
slaves appeared to outweigh any conceivable advantages.
The fall of Chattanooga late in 1863 marked an important turning point for
Confederate fortunes in the western theater. Early in 1864, Major General
Patrick R. Cleburne, a division commander in the Army of Tennessee, made
the strategic case for arming slaves, sweeping aside philosophical and political
objections. In his judgment, Confederate armies were becoming so desperate
for manpower that the government could no longer refrain from mobilizing
black men. He boldly concluded that freedomfor the individual soldier
and his whole race who side with usmust reward faithful military service. Cleburnes proposal eventually reached Richmond, where the president
and the secretary of war ordered its suppression. Cleburnes death in battle
late in 1864 silenced his dissenting voice permanently, but Confederate leaders
could not so readily ignore the issues he raised. Even as public interest in the
cause of arming the slaves simmered, the relation between slavery and national independence began rising to a boil.
The fall and winter of 18641865 proved to be especially difcult seasons for Confederate soldiers. The men in Robert E. Lees Army of Northern
Virginiawho hailed disproportionately from states east of the Mississippi
River and in particular from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgiashowed a
marked and growing propensity to desert. Early in 1865, at the dawn of
another campaigning season, variants of Cleburnes proposal resurfaced and
again reached Richmond. Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin took special
interest in the subject, as did President Davis. Unwilling to proceed too far out
onto the political limb without support from Lee, who commanded the Confederacys major ghting force, Davis and Benjamin arranged with Lee to poll
the soldiers for their opinion about arming the slaves. Enlisted men no less
than ofcers apparently debated the question extensively, leaving no considerationideological, political, social, or militaryunexamined. In the end,
most units in Lees army expressed support for arming and training former
slaves and rushing them to the front. Strong dissenting voices also rose to
squelch the proposal, none more impassioned than that of General Howell
Cobb of Georgia. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the
end of the revolution, Cobb declared. If slaves will make good soldiers our
whole theory of slavery is wrong. The choice of independence or slavery
was difcult enough, but independence purchased with the service of slave
soldiers proved unacceptable to hard-liners.
Because Lee viewed the matter through the eyes of a soldier and not those of
a political ideologue, he quietly informed Davis that he and his army would

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welcome the men recruited from the ranks of the enslaved. Although Lee
understood the need to offer freedom to slave volunteers and their immediate
families, he left the details to the politicians. By March 1865, with President
Daviss signature on the enabling legislation, military authorities in Richmond
began recruiting and drilling a company of such men. At the time that the
Confederate government abandoned the city a month later, several hundred
had been uniformed and smaller numbers armed and drilled. Although some
of these men reportedly engaged the Yankees in combat, the true test of Cleburnes theory of employing slave soldiers in the ght for Confederate independence never came.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the surviving record contains virtually no commentary about how potential recruits and their families viewed the prospect of
gaining freedom by ghting for the Confederacy, though it must have been a
thoroughlyperhaps hotlydebated topic in African American communities throughout the South. As the parallel debate among free black southerners
suggests, the objective was not simply to support the continuation of slavery
or the success of the Confederate cause of independence. Instead, volunteers
aimed to translate the public emergency into gains for themselves and their
families. Free black men wished to enhance their social or political privileges; enslaved men sought the fundamental rights of free persons. Personal
considerationsthe need to care for an aged parent or an overwhelming sense
of attachment to a placealso affected the process whereby individuals determined their next steps, mindful that they could not predict the ultimate outcome of their actions. For every circumstance in which the choice may have
appeared a Faustian one between good and evil, right and wrong, there were
many others in which the lines were blurred and the shadings more subtle than
stark. Had the war continued beyond the spring of 1865, with growing numbers of black men either enlisting or being conscripted, the Confederacy could
not have escaped the dilemma that General Cobb identied.
The debate about arming slaves in defense of the Union began from approximately the same starting point as that in the Confederacy but soon changed
courses and ultimately arrived at a very different destination. By virtue of the
pervasive inuence of proslavery ideology in northern racial thinking, northerners sounded very much like southerners in their characterizations of African Americans, both free and enslaved. The similarity derived in part from the
strong presence of the slaveholding interest in the early strategic planning on
the part of the North. Because the four border slaveholding states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had never left the Union, their politi-

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cians and citizens obliged the federal government to uphold slavery. What is
more, because all four of the states occupied strategically important positions, their citizens had additional reason to expect that the government in
Washington would mollify the slaveholding interest. Had Maryland seceded,
the national capital in Washington would have been surrounded by Confederate territory, forcing the abandonment of the capital and tarnishing if not
thoroughly corroding the Union. Had any of the other three border states
allied with the Confederacy, important industrial and agricultural resources
would have been denied to the United States and important routes of attack
the Mississippi, Ohio, and Delaware Rivers and Delaware Baywould have
been opened.
Whether they lived in slave states proximate to the Confederate border or in
the free states farther to the north, most citizens of the United States shared the
notion of a white mans war. The belief derived in part from their common
understanding that saving the Union, not freeing the slaves, was the chief aim.
The future of slavery had no place in attempting to resolve the national emergency. President Abraham Lincolns call for volunteers in April 1861 did not
envision the service of black men; in fact, the applicable federal legislation of
1792 expressly stated that bearing arms was the responsibility (and the prerogative) of white men only.
With the public eye focused on raising armies, few noticed the mobilization
of black men into the navy, which actually predated the start of hostilities in
April 1861. From its inception in the 1790s the navy had permitted men of
all ethnic and racial groups to serve. Much like the naval forces of the worlds
maritime powers, the navy of the United States recruited men with little regard
to their race or nativity. Despite regulations rst introduced in the 1840s that
limited the percentage of African American recruits to 5 percent of the total,
black men served. Men held as slaves at times entered naval service with the
consent of their owners. At Hampton Roads, Virginia, site of a large naval
base, such enlistments were routine. George Teamoh, an enslaved native Virginian who eventually escaped from bondage, served several such stints during
the 1840s.
The rigid structure of the naval service helps explain why the enlistment of
black menslaves includedcaused such little stir. A wide chasm separated
enlisted men from ofcers, and nested hierarchies based largely on rank situated each man relative to every other. Although naval ofcials generally hoped
that the enlisted force might mirror the population of citizens, they also recognized that the sturdy yeoman of the Jeffersonian ideal wanted little to do with
the sea. From the standpoint of ofcers, enlisted men were the dregs of society

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whose loyalty to alcohol and lewd women ran stronger than that to nation and
whose obedience depended on fear of harsh punishment rather than deference
to legitimate authority.
By the late summer of 1861, amid a rapid and large-scale increase in the
number of ships and the size of the enlisted force, naval ofcials began to
ponder the use of black men more seriously than they had ever done before. As
white men clamored to enlist in the volunteer army units, as naval enlistments
faltered, and as naval vessels began operating in Confederate waters, the prospect of enlisting black men (escaped slaves not excluded) presented itself. This
policy succeeded magnicently in relieving manpower shortages on vessels
with crew members acclimated to the southern summer, and accordingly it
served as a foundation on which later naval personnel policy rested.
Few public gures outside of naval circles commented on the navys successful enlistment of black men, and no one advocated it as a model for the army,
not even the leading spokesmen for northern free blacks. To Frederick Douglass, John Mercer Langston, and other veterans of the antebellum struggles for
equality, the war presented a unique opportunity to strike a blow for liberty,
help save the Union, and establish an undeniable claim to manhood rights,
especially the suffrage. But military and not naval service offered the path to
those ends. Other mensome free-born, others formerly enslaved, and many
with relatives still held in bondagewho wished to take up arms to destroy
slavery added their voices to the cause. Despite the apparent indifference if
not outright hostility of the government, they continued to agitate for the
cause on the abolitionist speaking circuit throughout the northern states, Canada, and Europe. Although this agitation did not immediately bear fruit, it
prepared the soil.
First the Union had to agree to make war against slavery. This transformation
occurred relatively quickly during the rst year of the war. By the spring of
1862, before the rst anniversary of the battle of Fort Sumter, public sentiment
began reecting this change. The federal fugitive slave act helped bring the
issue into clear focus. From its passage in 1850, the law had provoked controversy, but the large mobilization of federal forces and their deployment early in
the war in the border states spawned fresh concerns. Protecting the property
rights of Unionist slaveholders was one thing, but not so those of Confederates. Federal troops charged with enforcing the law often experienced difculty distinguishing between Unionist and Confederate slaveholders; both
groups appeared equally determined to assure that their own interests stood
paramount. Witnessing how masters mistreated apprehended fugitives both
sickened volunteer soldiers and conjured up images from Uncle Toms Cabin,

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Harriet Beecher Stowes sentimental novel about the inhumanity of slavery.

Recounting these experiences to their families at home helped reinforce a sense
of sympathy for the slaves and contempt for their masters.
More to the point, soldiers quickly assessed how relieving the slaves misfortunes could also ameliorate their own and began harboring fugitives to
assist with camp chores. Certain regiments gained a reputation for such acts,
with predictable results. As escaped slaves sought protection, slaveholders
demanded the return of their property. Military advances into Virginia and
Tennessee relaxed the political tension somewhat by removing the offending
troops from states that had remained within the Union. Against the backdrop
of this mobilization of convenience, citizens and policy makers alike began
debating the strategic use of black men as soldiers and not simply as laborers.
During the spring and summer of 1862, Congress translated this sentiment
into public policy, rst by exempting federal forces from the obligation to
enforce the fugitive slave act and then by passing the Militia Act and the
Second Conscation Act. The former authorized the use of black men and
women in support capacities to aid the Union cause. The latter offered federal
protection and the hope of eventual freedom to the slaves of Confederate
masters. Steps that scarcely fteen months earlier had appeared unthinkable
now took on quite a different aspect.
When President Lincoln took a position on these issues during the summer
of 1862, his intent was clear: preserving the Union required abandoning slavery. Yet two factors continued to hinder translating this vision into reality. The
rst was the continuing vitality of slavery combined with the political clout of
slaveholders in the border states. The second was the possibility of a public
backlash if federal ofcials made emancipation a war aim. Lincoln tried to
appease border state slaveholders by promising monetary compensation in
exchange for voluntary emancipation. As an added incentive, he proposed
colonizing the freedpeople to distant lands. He clung to that notion long after
its utter impracticalityand cool public receptionshould have convinced
him otherwise. But slaveholding Unionists refused to relinquish their property
on any terms, and Lincolns warning that the friction and abrasion of war
would wear away at slavery began proving true.
Military events in the various theaters of war also suggested the expediency
of making war on slavery and employing the enslaved to further the cause.
Federal operations in South Carolina and Louisiana illustrate. On assuming
command of the Union occupation force based at Hilton Head, South Carolina, in the spring of 1862, General David Hunter began taking dramatic
steps to make war against slavery. He proclaimed free the slaves in South
Carolina, Georgia, and Floridaan action that President Lincoln promptly

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countermanded for procedural as well as policy reasonsand proposed to

equip and train formerly enslaved men for military service against the Confederacy. Owing largely to Hunters unbridled abolitionism, the War Department refused to grant his request for approval. He nonetheless began organizing the force, which by summer numbered in the hundreds. Increasingly
skeptical that he would gain ofcial sanction, Hunter disbanded the regiment,
save for one company he assigned to his quartermaster, General Rufus Saxton,
a New England abolitionist. In short order, Saxton won War Department
approval and began recruiting in earnest. With the assistance of abolitionist
allies, Saxton enlisted Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a renowned opponent
of slavery, to command the unit. The men of the First South Carolina Volunteers (later the Thirty-third U.S. Colored Infantry) performed superbly for the
remainder of the war, capitalizing on their knowledge of the local geography
and the ways of the planter class. Higginsons dispatches from the front, which
were published serially during the war and then under the title Army Life in a
Black Regiment in 1870, gave stirring tribute to the men and their heroic
exploits, which northern readers took as rst-hand evidence that the experiment of arming black men might succeed.
Reports from Louisiana pointed toward the same conclusion. Shortly after
the federal occupation of New Orleans in April 1862, General Benjamin F.
Butler, the Massachusetts politician commanding federal forces, became embroiled in a debate with one of his subordinates, General John W. Phelps, a
Vermont abolitionist eager to make war against slavery, over the propriety of
arming black men. Phelps pressed for Butlers authorization to arm and train
fugitive slaves as soldiers, but Butler refused on the grounds that military
necessity did not warrant the move. Butler also admonished Phelps to curb the
antislavery enthusiasm of his troops and their agrant disrespect for the property rights of Unionist slaveholders. By August Butler forced the unrelenting
Phelps to resign even as he began sensing a shift in the political winds regarding the use of black men in the war effort. Recalling the offer of service to the
Union made by the free men of color in the Native Guardan offer he had
originally spurnedButler not only enlisted them but also authorized the
commissioned ofcers to retain their ranks. In short order, African American
Louisianans, enslaved no less than free, began volunteering in large numbers
and continued to do so for the rest of the war.
When the Confederate government did not respond favorably to his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln declared an end to slavery in the rebel states on January 1, 1863. Although critics have faulted the
Emancipation Proclamation, it fundamentally transformed the nature of the

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war. First, it committed federal forces to destroying slavery within the Confederate states. Second, it authorized the wholesale mobilization of persons of
African descent, under arms as well as in support capacities. Within the short
space of ve months, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored
Troops with special responsibility to arm, equip, and train for combat as many
men of African descent as could be brought into service. General Lorenzo
Thomas, the Adjutant General of the Army, personally directed the recruiting
drive in the Mississippi Valley, aiming to take advantage of the heavy concentrations of slaves laboring on the plantations of the Confederate heartland. Union recruiters succeeded magnicently. Of the nearly 179,000 black
men who served in the Union army during the Civil War (more than 98,000 of
whom were recruited within the eleven Confederate states), Louisiana accounted for more than 24,000, Tennessee for another 20,000, and Mississippi
for nearly 18,000. Nearly 64 percent of the men recruited in the Confederate
states and nearly 35 percent of all the black men who served in the army
during the Civil War came from these three states. The vast majority of these
men had been enslaved at the start of the war.
The nal piece of the federal mobilization of enslaved black soldiers involved the loyal slave states that had remained within the Union. Although
initially placed off-limits to recruiters, the farms and plantations of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri lost their exempt status in the spring
and summer of 1864. As Lincoln abandoned all hope of convincing borderstate slaveholders and their political representatives to embrace compensated
emancipation and colonization, the War Department began seriously recruiting black men there. Federal law authorized payment of the enlistment bonus
of each slave to his master, in effect offering several hundred dollars in compensation in exchange for the mans freedom. Under pressure from the enlisted former slaves and from other quarters as well, in March 1865 Congress
granted freedom to the immediate families of the enlistees, thereby unloosing a
new wave of enlistments that had particular impact on Kentucky, where nearly
twenty-four thousand black men took up arms, many during the nal weeks
of the war. The enlistment of enslaved black men terminally weakened the
institution of slavery in the border states. Federal ofcials took this risk because of their desperate need for manpower and their growing acknowledgment that slavery would not survive the war. They also did so, at least implicitly, as a result of actions by the enslaved. Men ran from their masters to
enlist, often traveling considerable distances and taking great risks to do so.
And persons who remained on the plantations and farms pressed against the
traditional boundaries of slavery.
In crude numbers, black men constituted approximately 10 percent of the

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Union armys enlisted personnel during the Civil War, yet this gure underestimates the true impact of their presence. Given the small number of black
troops who entered service before 1863, the inux of the African Americans
began at a time when the Unions need for men was growing. Imposition of the
federal draft assured a continuing ow of fresh white recruits, but conscription could not replicate either the numbers of men who volunteered at the
onset of hostilities or their enthusiasm for the cause. Black soldiers helped
reverse both the declining numbers and the ebbing passion, and as their numbers grew, their proportion of the effective force at the disposal of Union
military strategists did likewise. A similar pattern obtained in the navy. In
terms of overall numbers, black sailors constituted between 15 and 20 percent
of the enlisted personnel during the course of the war, but their impact grew
more signicant over time. In the spring of 1861 they represented less than
5 percent of the navys ghting force; by the summer of 1862 the proportion
increased to 15 percent, and during the fall of 1864 it peaked at 23 percent.
The experience of formerly enslaved African Americans in the U.S. Navy
during the Civil War partly overlaps that of their counterparts who served in
the army. They made up more than half of the nearly eighteen thousand men
who served, with particularly sizeable enlistments of men born in Virginia,
Maryland, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina. A
number of these men had had some experience with maritime life (either in
coastal waters or on inland rivers), but most had not. And although the service remained impervious to the democratic tendencies that enjoyed some
play in the army, African American sailors often beneted from the rigidity of
naval structures. Men with similar ratings (the naval term for ranks) received
the same pay regardless of race or nativity, and judicial proceedings did not
overtly discriminate against black men even though the captains of individual
vessels enjoyed wide latitude in how they administered naval regulations.
The dynamics of individual naval vessels created miniature worlds in which
the experience of formerly enslaved sailors might differ signicantly from
one vessel to another. The commanding ofcer set the tone for interactions
between ofcers and enlisted men. If he considered black men capable of
performing their duties creditably, then ofcers and men acted accordingly;
similarly, his expressions of disdain might lead to diatribes and worse. The
experience of sailors differed in other important respects from that of soldiers
in the sense that the world of the vessel was dened by the rigid boundary of
the hull. In the best of cases space was cramped, and men labored, ate, slept,
and relaxed in close proximity to each other. Depending on the size and type of
vessel, its tactical deployment, the squadron to which it was attached, and the
demography of the crew, black sailors who had recently escaped from slavery

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interacted more or less frequently with freeborn sailors, performed more or

less back-breaking labor, experienced more or less combat with Confederate
forces, and enjoyed more or less likelihood of advancing in rating. Aboard the
mortar schooner Adolph Hugel in the Potomac Flotilla, for instance, during
the closing months of the war, forty-one members of the forty-eight-man crew
(85 percent) were African American; their numbers included nearly all of the
senior noncommissioned ofcers. The vessel patrolled the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers in pursuit of Confederate forces. In contrast, the supply
vessel Vermont, whose crew was also overwhelmingly African American, remained moored to a pier at Port Royal, South Carolina, the repair and supply
base of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Vermonts men loaded stores
day in and day out, seldom going to sea or engaging the enemy.
The traditions of naval service accommodated the large inux of black
sailors awkwardly at best, even in the interest of helping to suppress the
rebellion. During the rst two years of the war, Navy Department policy
relegated contrabands to the low-paying and low-status rating of boy.
After that restriction was lifted, enlistment ofcers persisted in rating the
formerly enslaved at the bottom of the rating ladder. Navy Department policy
also barred black men from commissioned ofce, and although a handful of
black sailors were promoted to noncommissioned ofcer ratings with responsibilities of command, the numbers of such men came nowhere near the number of black noncommissioned ofcers in the army or their percentage of the
entire enlisted force. Finally, signicant numbers of contraband sailors were
rated as cooks and stewards, working essentially as ofcers servants. Although all shipboard personnel fullled assigned duties during combatand,
indeed, several contrabands merited the Medal of Honor for conspicuous acts
of bravery in battlethe fact remains that formerly enslaved men largely
occupied the least prestigious positions in the naval pecking order. Although
they, too, fought against the forms of discrimination embedded in naval traditions and derived from the stereotypes of white ofcers and enlisted men, the
structure of naval service was for the most part inexible to such pressures for
change. A navy court had no sympathy for Ordinary Seaman George E. Smith,
who deserted to enlist in the army, where, he believed, he had a better chance
for advancement than what the navy presented. In the face of such challenges,
the men bided their time, kept their own counsel, performed their duty conscientiously, and awaited the day when they could return to civilian life.
As the recruitment of African American soldiers intensied during the spring
and summer of 1863, several black units that had been recruited earlier withstood the test of combat and helped remove the last reservations about the

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military potential of black men under arms. Two of those units consisted
largely of men who had been free before the warthe Second Louisiana
Native Guard at Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May and the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July. But the units
that fought commendably at Millikens Bend, Louisiana, in June consisted
entirely of men who had been slaves. Most were Louisiana natives recruited
into service only a short time earlier. What they lacked in training, according
to one after-action report, they more than compensated for in erce obstinacy. These three battles helped dispel the doubts that men of African
descent might affect the military outcome of the war.
The misgivings grew largely out of prevalent racial ideology, from which not
even abolitionists were entirely immune. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson of the First South Carolina Volunteers, for instance, assumed an air of
paternalism toward his men, characterizing them as a mysterious race of
grown-up children. Although he did not doubt they could serve effectively, he
attributed their prociency in drill and discipline to their imitativeness and
docility. Despite these blind spots, Higginson clearly saw the determination
with which his men fought against slaveryoften in the personal terms of
freeing loved ones from onerous mastersand he trumpeted the ghting ability of black men. Many skeptics remained unconvinced until they, too, bore
personal witness. Over the course of the next two years, more and more
observers had the opportunity.
Often the soldiers from white volunteer units cast the greatest scorn, at
times because they did not wish to share the laurels that they had acquired and
at times because they persisted in the belief of a white mans war. First-hand
observation often tempered this skepticism. White troops who fought with
black men at times acknowledged their bravery, if in no other way, as the
federal assault on Saltville, Virginia, in October 1864 illustrated, than by their
silence. En route to the engagement black troops endured much ridicule as
well as jeers and taunts from their white comrades, but after the battle, in
which the black soldiers fought gallantly, those who had scoffed at the Colored Troops on the march out were silent. Even as they gave grudging
respect, white soldiers also reserved the right to withhold it. What in white
units might have been written off to poor leadership or bad luck was not so
easily forgiven in black ones, particularly those consisting of former slaves,
whose miscues on the battleeld signaled their inferiority as men.
Army ofcers played an ambiguous role in this process of reconguring
racial stereotypes. High-ranking ofcers, who had the power to shape public
opinion regarding the use of black troops, sent mixed signals. Two men, Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, illustrate this point.
Grant clearly understood both the political and the military imperative to

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mobilize black manpower and did so conscientiously and effectively in the

forces he commanded. He welcomed black units into his army and deployed
them in combat roles. In contrast, Sherman remained skeptical throughout the
war of black mens ability to ght. Although he more than welcomed their
service in garrison and supply capacities, he steadfastly refused to integrate
them into his combat operations.
Ofcers who served at the company and regimental levels reproduced these
tensions a thousandfold, oftenbut not alwaysbased on the strength or
weakness of their antislavery convictions. Even paternalistic ofcers who acted
from selsh or careerist motives shared with their men a common need for
vindication in the eyes of their comrades and the broader public. Accordingly,
they often championed the mens struggles for equitable treatment from the
government they served. But as both the enlisted men and the ofcers sympathetic to their plight testied, poor ofcers were capable of great mischief.
Colonel James C. Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and commander
of a regiment of native North Carolinians, protested his units assignment to
excessive fatigue duty. Similarly situated commanders well understood the
exhaustion and demoralization that ensued, as well as the deleterious effect on
the mens mastery over the drill, but Beecher also identied other effects.
Noting that his men have been slaves and are just learning to be men,
Beecher denounced the so-called gentleman in uniform of U.S. Ofcers
who addressed the troops as dd Niggers. Such treatment simply
throws them back where they were before and reduces them to the position
of slaves again. With General Sherman signaling that black soldiers were
nothing more than military laborers, small wonder that regimental and company ofcers treated them as drudges.
White ofcers of an antislavery bent, like their counterparts in civilian life,
took every opportunity to contrast the arbitrary authority of slavery with the
rule of law practiced in free institutions. They had difculty explaining
especially to the men who served under themthe elements of caprice and
contradiction that this allegedly impartial rule of law often displayed. The
soldiers who had been freed from bondage at enlistment or shortly before did
not necessarily need the prodding of ofcers to perceive the army as different
from the plantation, yet they also learned quickly that the two were not necessarily polar opposites. Most important, formerly enslaved soldiers also came
to understand that individual ofcers and the army as an institution were
vulnerable to the comparison with slavery, and pressing that point might warrant a hearing if it did not necessarily produce the desired results.
In addition to combating doubts about their military effectiveness, black soldiers faced other challenges, perhaps none so fully chronicled as their struggle

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for equal pay. In June 1863, when the War Department ruled that black soldiers were entitled to earn only $10 per month (less clothing) rather than the
$13 per month (plus clothing) that white soldiers earned, black troops inaugurated a protest campaign that lasted more than a year until the government
abolished the distinction. The disability affected all soldiers equally. It insulted their manhood and devalued their part in the struggle against the Confederacy whether they were freeborn or formerly enslaved. Soldiers of every
antebellum status and from all geographical regions resented the distinction
and protested as best they could. Indeed, the one soldier executed for opposing unequal pay was a former slave: Sergeant William Walker of the Third
South Carolina Volunteers. Walker led his men to stack their arms before the
tent of their company commander. Although the regimental commander sympathized with the mens objection to inferior pay, he nonetheless preferred
charges against Walker for mutiny; the court found him guilty and sentenced
him to death.
A testament to the mens widespread resentment to second-class treatment,
Walkers execution also illustrates how the experience of formerly enslaved
men differed from that of their freeborn comrades. Lacking access to both the
tools of literacy and strong advocates inside and outside the service, Walker
acted on his convictions in ways that left him vulnerable to harsh military
regulations. In contrast, the protesting soldiers in the Fifty-fourth and Fiftyfth Massachusetts Volunteers employed the printed and spoken word and the
support of various advocates to help advance their cause. In one of the most
eloquent petitions of the entire war, James Henry Gooding, a freeborn corporal serving in the Fifty-fourth, wrote to President Lincoln protesting the
injustice of unequal pay. At once a blistering refutation of the logic of inequality and a stirring appeal for justice based on the mens loyalty and sacrice,
Gooding posed the critical issue: We have done a Soldiers Duty. Why cant we
have a Soldiers pay? The soldiers advocates, who included ofcers in the
Massachusetts regiments, elected ofcials, abolitionists, and journalists, amplied the case, citing a spectrum of reasons ranging from their self respect
as men to the governments abrogation of its contract.
Beyond simply illuminating different modes of expressing dissent accessible
to men of northern and southern birth, the pay controversy also hints at
deeper divisions. Goodings letter contrasted the governments relation with
freeborn men to its relation with former slaves. While not wishing to rate our
Service, of more Value to the Government, than the service of the exslave, he
insisted that the Massachusetts men were not enlisted under any contraband act whereby the federal government assumed a role of temporary
Gaurdian over slaves freed by military necessity. Gooding pointedly distanced the freemen from the freedmen, saying that the former were freemen

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by birth, and consequently, having the advantage of thinking, and acting for
ourselves, so far as the Laws would allow us. Other freeborn northerners
advocated on behalf of the formerly enslaved without drawing the distinction
that Gooding did. Simon Prisby, for instance, a freeman from Pennsylvania,
took up the case of the men in the Twenty-fth Army Corps whose abusive
ofcers struck with their swords anyone who lacked prociency in military
drills. Prisby argued that men who has Been in Bondage cannot be expected
to Do as well as a man that has Been free.
Freemen from southern states likewise denounced the policy of unequal pay
as unjust, but they did not contrast themselves with their slave-born comrades
to quite the extent that Gooding did. William J. Brown, a black sergeant from
Kentucky, for example, also argued for our Just Rights respecting equal
pay. Yet in characterizing himself as Freeborn and Educated to some extent
and distinguishing himself from the rest of his regimenta coloured one of
Southern Birth consequently have no education, he did not suggest their
ineligibility for the entitlements of freemen. Almost in the nature of the
case, the interactions between freeborn men and men who had been enslaved
moved along a spectrum ranging from mutual solidarity to mutual suspicion.
When Confederate forces captured black soldiers in battle, they did not necessarily treat freemen differently from former slaves. From the time of the rst
deployment of black soldiers in federal military operations beginning in the
summer of 1862, Confederates had threatened to treat captured black soldiers
as rebellious slaves rather than prisoners of war. By the following spring, the
growing mobilization of black men enabled Confederate soldiers to make
good on the threat. With the authorization of the Secretary of War, Confederate troops were permitted to summarily execute captured black soldiers, inasmuch as [t]hey cannot be recognized in any way as soldiers subject to the
rules of war and to trial by Military Courts. Subsequent orders required
captors to remand black captives to state authorities for proper disposition
according to the laws of the respective states; the white commanding ofcers
deserved the same fate on the grounds that they were leading armed slaves in
insurrection. The assault on Fort Wagner in July 1863, in which scores of
men from the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers were captured and their
slain commander, Robert Gould Shaw, was allegedly buried with the Negroes
that fell with him, created a public outcry in the North. President Lincoln did, in fact, issue orders on July 31, 1863, denouncing the Confederate policy as a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the civilization
of the age and threatening to retaliate against Confederate prisoners. For
the remainder of the war, Confederate troops on occasion executed black
prisonersmost notoriously at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and Saltville, Virginia,

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in 1864without federal retaliation. Yet not all of the African American

captives were executed. Some prisoners of Fort Wagner remained incarcerated
in Charleston until the city fell into Union hands late in the war, and most of the
black men conned at Andersonville survived the ordeal, perhaps, as a recent
study suggests, because their assignment to labor details afforded them [t]he
opportunity for exercise and extra rations.
Black soldiers relationships with their families also followed the fault line of
slavery. Men from the free states of the North legitimately feared for the wellbeing of their loved ones. Given their marginality in the northern economy,
families often relied on networks of kinfolk and neighbors to meet their necessary expenses. As the Massachusetts men pondered an appropriate response
to the governments offer of inferior pay, the potential impact on their families
loomed large. That notwithstanding, the men decided to refuse inferior pay,
and the predictable suffering ensued. Yet the men whose families were still
enslavedin the border slave states of the Union as well as the states of the
Confederacyhad stronger causes for concern.
Black men from the slave states considered liberating their loved ones the
best remedy against abusive masters. Sergeant Joseph J. Harris from Bayou
Sara, Louisiana, for instance, wrote to General Daniel Ullman, the antislavery commander of a brigade of African American soldiers operating near his
home. Harris asked Ullman for a Small favor, namely, to visit his home
plantation to take a way my Farther & mother & my brothers wife with all
their Childern, harbor them at his headquarters, and notify Harris so that he
could Send after them. It would be better for the children to be in school
than serving their mistress, he argued. Spotswood Rice, a former slave who
had served as a manager on tobacco plantations, wrote directly to the owner
of his children demanding their release. In an impassioned statement that drew
as much on his faith in a vengeful God as his condence in federal arms, Rice
told Kitty Diggsaddressing her directly, without employing the customary
Miss Kitty as a sign of deferencethat where ever you and I meets we are
enmays to each othere I offered once to pay you forty dollers for my own Child
but I am glad now that you did not accept it Just hold on now as long as you
can and the worse it will be for you. More typically, black soldiers had little
knowledge of their families fate and less ability to inuence it.
With varying degrees of self-sufciency and dependence, soldiers families
faced the promises and perils of freedom apart from their menfolk. In areas
occupied by federal forces, families often lived in contraband camps more or
less distant from or off-limits to the men. There they encountered military and
government ofcials, missionaries, teachers, philanthropists, and private citi-

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293

zens with varying motives for working among the freedpeople. Families of
soldiers still in the hands of slaveholders faced even greater challenges. Masters required women to perform the labor previously done by the men, deprived them of privileges, whipped them, and threatened them with worse out
of spite for the soldiers having enlisted. In some locales, owners reportedly
locked up their eld hands clothing, boots and shoes at night to prevent
them from running away. I have had nothing but trouble since you left,
Martha Glover wrote her husband from Mexico, Missouri, in late 1863. You
need not tell me to beg any more married men to enlist, she informed him. I
see too much trouble to try to get any more into trouble too. Patsy Leach of
Woodford County, Kentucky, testied that after her husband enlisted, her
master treated me more cruelly than ever whipping me frequently without
any cause and insulting me on every occasion.
Women had to assume the additional physical and emotional burdens attendant on their new circumstances. Such experiences fostered a developing sense
of freedpeoples rights that in many respects paralleled what the men experienced. They sought justice as well as protection from federal authorities.
Though not adverse to labor, those in Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy did not wish to continue working like slaves. Those in the border states
expected the government to make good its March 1865 grant of freedom to
the families of black soldiers. Growing awareness of these rights and the
struggles to achieve them helped lay the foundation for an expansion of such
efforts after the war. Yet evidence from recent wars offers a sobering perspective on the vulnerability of civilian populations in war zones to general and
specic traumas and the likelihood of post-traumatic stress. Without necessarily extinguishing the quest for freedom, these experiences tempered the
sense of jubilation.
In the end, the men no less than their families learned the painful lesson that
the federal government was an institution, whose representativeswhether
military or naval ofcers, civilian ofcials, teachers, missionaries, or philanthropistsdisplayed the full range of human foibles. Freedom would be an
ongoing process rather than a single, earth-shattering event. It affected private
lives as well as the body politic, in the northern free states no less than the
southern slave states. The true heroism of the Civil War generation lay in their
persisting in the struggle even after the myths of the Day of Jubilee and the
Promised Land were shattered.
Endurance in the struggle depended on mastering such skills of citizenship as
literacy, a connection that soldiers from slave states, which generally prohibited slaves from learning to read and write, perceived with special clarity.

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First Sergeant John Sweeny, a free Kentuckian, wished to establish a school in

his regiment inasmuch as we Stand deeply in need of instruction the majority
of us having been slaves. Fearing that his lack of education might cast a
cloud over my future life, he also expressed heart ache to see my race of
people . . . neglected And ill treated on the account of the lack of Education
being incapable of putting Thier complaints or applications in writing.
During the last year of the war, men in virtually all the black units beneted
from regimental schools, often through a combination of their own exertions
and those of military ofcers and northern missionaries and teachers. The
chaplain of one Louisiana black regiment described a remarkable growth in
literacy skills: early in 1864 not more than fteen in the regiment knew the
alphabet thoroughly; a year later but one person . . . does not know the
alphabet. In another, the men seem to regard their books as an indespensable portion of their equipments, and the cartridge box and spelling book
are attached to the same belt. Men born in the free states of the North
often had the rudiments of an education. They could communicate with loved
ones through the mails and read (and, if the spirit moved them, write letters to)
the New York Anglo-African or the Christian Recorder, the organ of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church. Perhaps most important, they could
employ their mastery over the written word as a weapon in the struggle for
equal rights.
For all these reasons, no less than for their understanding of the place of
literacy in the constellation of attributes that free persons enjoyed, former
slave soldiers placed a high premium on access to education and took advantage of every opportunity to master the skills of reading, writing, and spelling. They carried this passion into the postwar period, passing it on to their
children and grandchildren, while often contending against former masters
who desired to keep them ignorant. As the freedpeople learned, literacy provided access to much more than simply the political culture of the republic;
it also opened access to the Scriptures and offered a measure of protection
against those who used the written word to swindle the unschooled.
Such proponents of black military service as Frederick Douglass had argued
from the start that soldiering would lead inexorably to citizenship rights,
including the suffrage, and during the closing months of the war, certain key
indicators began pointing in a promising direction. President Lincoln proposed that Louisiana Unionists consider granting limited suffrage rights to
African American men, and one version of the proposed Thirteenth Amendment that Congress was considering, to ensure that Lincolns Emancipation
Proclamation would withstand the end of hostilities, contained an express
guarantee of equal rights to all citizens. At the same time, antislavery politi-

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295

cal factions gained ascendancy in several of the border states and began taking
the steps that would eventually result in the abolition of slavery in Maryland,
Missouri, and Tennessee between November 1864 and February 1865.
A remarkable petition from African American residents of Nashville, Tennessee, to the Unionist state convention assembled to form a new state government illustrates the ways in which military service invigorated the struggles for
human and citizenship rights. The petitioners claimed freedom as our natural
right by virtue of membership in the great human family, descended from
one great God, who is the common Father of all, and who bestowed on all
races and tribes the priceless right of freedom. In light of the fact that the
Emancipation Proclamation exempted Tennessee from its provisions, the petitioners urged the convention to cut up by the roots the system of slavery, one
of the greatest crimes in all history and the source of the rebellion. Their unwavering delity to the Union, as illustrated by the service of nearly 200,000
of our brethren . . . in the ranks of the Union army, merited citizenship: If
we are called on to do military duty against the rebel armies in the eld,
why should we be denied the privilege of voting against rebel citizens at the
ballot-box?
On balance, enslaved men under arms contributed signicantly to the Unions
victory in the Civil War. They helped alleviate a shortage of manpower at
precisely the time that white northerners began seriously questioning the level
of sacrice that the federal government asked of its citizens. Moreover, their
strong commitment to emancipation helped to counterbalance white soldiers
lukewarm support fornot to mention outright opposition tothe Emancipation Proclamation. Although they generally lacked the public forums and
the literary tools for expressing their understanding of the war, their surviving
explanations evoke the principles of loyalty, equality, and justice. Even as they
placed implicit faith in Abraham Lincoln to lead the nation out of the throes of
slavery into the Promised Land of freedom, they also recognizedas Frederick Douglass and others had exhortedthat he who would be free must
himself strike the rst blow.
Looking forward to the return of peace and the end of human bondage,
formerly enslaved soldiers and sailors expected assistance from the federal
government. They did not necessarily wish to keep their former masters down,
but neither did they desire to have the disabilities of slavery retard their progress as freed people. In the circumstances, they desired protection for themselves and their families, schools for their children and, insofar as possible,
government assistance in acquiring land or securing employment.
Taking inspiration from their knowledge of their role in preserving the

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Union and from the struggles for equality in which they had engaged while in
the service, African American veterans intended to exercise the rights of free
men. Although most did so without fanfare, a signicant number built on the
skill and experience they had gained in uniform to serve their communities on
returning home. Former slaveholders did not always appreciate such initiative, and the Ku Klux Klan and similar vigilante bands frequently targeted
black veterans for attack. In instances where the veterans had access to weapons, armed clashes at times resulted, and not always to the advantage of the
terrorists. In the end, however, without strong government protection, black
veteranslike the freed people generallyrealized that they could do little
against the armed wrath of the former masters.
Politics offered hope of inuencing public policy for the common good.
Predictably, former soldiers viewed manhood suffrage as a means both to
guarantee government protection against the whims of vindictive former masters and to exert positive inuence on the legislative process. Although formerly
enslaved soldiers may not have sought public ofce with quite the determination that freeborn African Americans did, they nonetheless contributed substantially toward promoting political awareness and support for the Republican Party during the early postwar years. By virtue of their sheer numbers, the
formerly enslaved soldiers who returned to their homes in the former Confederate states lent a powerful impetus to the movement for black manhood suffrage, rst made possible in the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and then in the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of 1868 and 1870. Civil War veterans
provided the backbone of the Republican Party in such former Confederate
states as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee throughout Reconstruction and
beyond. In the process, they contributed handsomely to grassroots democratic
movements that have been a hallmark of the political tradition in the United
States from the beginning.
Less heroically, however, formerly enslaved soldiers often returned to their
homes and engaged in the mundane struggle for survival in a harsh environment wherein their federal service constituted a liability rather than an asset.
Because the war resulted in the destruction of slavery, former masters held a
special grudge against the men whose service helped achieve that end. Slaveholders in the border states showed special animus, particularly when the
Thirteenth Amendment took effect in December 1865. In Kentucky, where
approximately sixty-ve thousand persons were still enslaved at that time,
masters unleashed a virtual reign of terror against persons of African descent,
the presumed beneciaries of the federal governments alleged betrayal of its
loyal white citizens. Soldiers and their families suffered most.
In such a political climate, African American veterans of military and naval

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297

service made no secret of their true colors to their families and neighbors
but weighed the risks of expressing their political beliefs publicly outside the
framework of the Grand Army of the Republic. That notwithstanding, they
applied for federal veterans pension benets in roughly the same proportion
as did their white comrades. Although not insubstantial, the benets were far
from princely; they did, however, enable the recipients to exert a measure
of independence from white employers, literally and guratively. Notwithstanding the manifold challenges that freedom presented, the veterans could
take pride in knowing that they helped destroy slavery, save the Union, and
establish republican liberty and the rule of law throughout the land. The
memory of those accomplishments carried them and their children a long way.
Notes
1. See Ervin L. Jordan Jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (Charlottesville, 1995), chap. 11; Richard Rollins, ed., Black Southerners in Gray:
Essays on African-Americans in Confederate Armies (Redondo Beach, CA, 1994); James
H. Brewer, The Confederate Negro: Virginias Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861
1865 (Durham, 1969).
2. The approximation for service in the army derives from Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy,
and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Black Military Experience, ser. 2 of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 18611867 (Cambridge, UK, 1982), p. 12, table 1,
which indicates that more than 98,000 men were recruited from the states of the Confederacy and nearly 42,000 additional men from the slaveholding states that remained
within the United States; it is unlikely that more than 10,000 of this 140,000 were free
men. For the navy, see Joseph P. Reidy, Black Men in Navy Blue during the Civil War,
Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 33:3 (Fall
2001): 15567, esp. 156.
3. For an assessment of the impact of black soldiers on the Unions war effort, see
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience; Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in
Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Ofcers (New York, 1990);
and Joseph T. Glatthaar, Black Glory: The African-American Role in Union History, in
Why the Confederacy Lost, ed. Gabor S. Boritt (New York, 1992), 13562. Of the
numerous works on the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, particularly noteworthy are Luis F.
Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: History of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteer
Infantry, 18631865, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1894), and Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown,
and Donald Yacovone, eds., Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst, 2001).
4. Excerpt from John J. Cheatham to the Hon. L. P. Walker, May 4, 1861, in Berlin,
Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 282.
5. See representative photographs in Jordan, Black Confederates, following p. 181.
6. Ibid., 22324, and chap. 10 generally.
7. L. H. Minor to [Secretary of War], May 2, 1861, in Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields,
Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Destruction of

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Joseph P. Reidy

Slavery, seri. 1, vol. 1 of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation (Cambridge,

UK, 1985), 698.
8. See David S. Cicelski, The Watermans Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime
North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 2001); Thomas C. Buchanan, The Slave Mississippi:
African-American Steamboat Workers, Networks of Resistance, and the Commercial
World of the Western Rivers, 18111880 (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University,
1998).
9. John M. Coski, Capital Navy: The Men, Ships, and Operations of the James River
Squadron (Campbell, CA, 1996), 176; Jordan, Black Confederates, 187.
10. James A. Miller Jr., Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress,
18391915 (Columbia, 1995), chap. 1.
11. See James C. Hollandsworth Jr., The Louisiana Native Guard: The Black Military
Experience During the Civil War (Baton Rouge, 1995); Manoj K. Joshi and Joseph P.
Reidy, To Come Forward and Aid in Putting Down This Unholy Rebellion: The Ofcers of Louisianas Free Black Native Guard During the Civil War Era, Southern Studies
21 (Fall 1982): 32642; and Mary F. Berry, Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The
Louisiana Native Guards, 18611863, Louisiana History 8 (Spring 1967): 16590.
12. O. G. Eiland to President Davis, July 20, 1863, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland,
Black Military Experience, 284 (emphasis in original).
13. Robert F. Durden, The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation (Baton Rouge, 1972), 60. See also Charles H. Wesley, Employment of Negro
Troops as Soldiers in the Confederate Army, Journal of Negro History 4 (July 1919):
23953.
14. Durden, Gray and the Black, 184.
15. Jordan, Black Confederates, 24651.
16. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York,
1988), chaps. 1, 9; Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History,
18611865 (Bloomington, 2000), 3649.
17. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 56.
18. Herbert Aptheker, The Negro in the Union Navy, Journal of Negro History 32
(April 1947): 169200; Harold D. Langley, The Negro in the Navy and Merchant
Service, 17981860, Journal of Negro History 52 (October 1967): 27386; David L.
Valuska, The African American in the Union Navy: 18611865 (New York, 1993);
Joseph P. Reidy, Black Men in Navy Blue During the Civil War, Prologue: Quarterly of
the National Archives and Records Administration 33 (Fall 2001): 15567. For rsthand glimpses into this experience, see William B. Gould IV, ed., Diary of a Contraband:
The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor (Palo Alto, CA, 2002), and Paul E. Sluby Sr. and
Stanton L. Wormley, eds., Diary of Charles B. Fisher (Washington, DC, 1983).
19. George Teamoh, God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of
George Teamoh, F. N. Boney, Richard L. Hume, and Raa Zafar, eds. (Macon, GA,
1990), 8284.
20. Harold D. Langley, Social Reform in the United States Navy, 17891862 (Urbana,
1967) treats naval culture before the Civil War.
21. Valuska, African American in the Union Navy, chaps. 23.
22. The best recent overviews of the war are McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, and
Weigley, Great Civil War. See also James M. McPherson, The Negros Civil War: How

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American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (New York, 1965);
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge,
1989); C. Peter Ripley et al., eds., The Black Abolitionist Papers, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill,
198592), esp. vol. 5; and Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the
Black State Conventions, 18401865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 197980), which survey the
eld of African American political agitation in the Civil War era. For a brief account by
Douglass of his role in these developments see Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
Written by Himself (Hartford, 1881), chaps. 1112.
23. On Uncle Toms Cabin, see Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations
of Slavery in England and America, 17801865 (New York, 2000), chap. 4. For a subtle
analysis of public sentiment toward the freedpeople during the Civil War, see Alice Fahs,
The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 18611865 (Chapel
Hill, 2001), esp. chap. 5.
24. See Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, chaps. 34; Berlin,
Fields, Glymph, Reidy , and Rowland, Destruction of Slavery, chaps. 1, 69.
25. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, eds., Black Military Experience, 45.
26. On Lincoln, see Mark E. Neely Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, 1993); LaWanda Cox, Lincoln and Black
Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership (Columbia, 1981).
27. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870; reprint,
New York, 1984).
28. See Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 4144, 6267; Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guard, chap. 2.
29. See John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, NY,
1963).
30. See Michael T. Meier, Lorenzo Thomas and the Recruitment of Blacks in the
Mississippi Valley, 18631865, in John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African
American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill, 2002), 24975.
31. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 12.
32. U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations (Boston, 1866), 13:571.
33. See Glatthaar, Black Glory, esp. 158.
34. Reidy, Black Men in Navy Blue, 15758, 165, n. 5.
35. In addition to the sources noted in n. 18, see Dennis J. Ringle, Life in Mr. Lincolns
Navy (Annapolis, 1998); and Donald J. Canney, Lincolns Navy: The Ships, Men and
Organization, 186165 (Annapolis, 1998).
36. Reidy, Black Men in Navy Blue,15863; Roger A. Davidson Jr., Yankee Rivers, Rebel Shore: The Potomac Flotilla and Civil Insurrection in the Chesapeake Region
(Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 2000); Lisa Y. King, Wounds That Bind: A Comparative Study of the Role Played by Civil War Veterans of African Descent in Community
Formation in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 18651915 (Ph.D. diss., Howard
University, 1999).
37. Reidy, Black Men in Navy Blue, 16061.
38. The denitive treatment of black soldiers battleeld performance during the Civil
War is Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862
1865 (Boston, 1998), but see also the essays in Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue.
39. Brigadier General Elias S. Dennis to Colonel John A. Rawlins, June 12, 1863, in

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Joseph P. Reidy

Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 533. On Port Hudson, see Lawrence Lee Hewitt, An Ironic Route to Glory: Louisianas Native Guards at Port Hudson, Smith, in Black Soldiers in Blue, chap. 2, and Stephen J. Ochs, A Black Patriot and a
White Priest: Andr Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans
(Baton Rouge, 2001), in addition to Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, chap. 5.
On Fort Wagner, see Trudeau, Like Men of War, 7190. On Millikens Bend, see Richard
Lowe, Battle on the Levee: The Fight at Millikens Bend, in Smith, Black Soldiers in
Blue, chap. 3.
40. Higginson, Army Life (quotations on 41 and 51). See also Keith Wilson, In the
Shadow of John Brown: The Military Service of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James
Montgomery, and Robert Shaw in the Department of the South, in Smith, Black Soldiers
in Blue, 30635; George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate
on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 18171914 (New York, 1971), 16971.
41. Colonel James S. Brisbin to Brig. Gen. L. Thomas, October 20, 1864, in Berlin,
Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 55758.
42. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, offers a superb overview of the relations between
white ofcers and their troops.
43. On Shermans opposition to the use of black soldiers, see Anne J. Bailey, The
USCT in the Confederate Heartland, in Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, 22748.
44. Colonel James C. Beecher to Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild, September 13, 1863, in
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, eds., Black Military Experience, 493.
45. For general treatments of the struggle against unequal pay, see Berlin, Reidy, and
Rowland, Black Military Experience, chap. 7; Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm:
Negro Troops in the Union Army, 18611865 (New York, 1956), 18196.
46. Corporal James Henry Gooding to Abraham Lincoln, September 28, 1863, in
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 38586, quotation on 386. See
also Virginia M. Adams, ed. On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldiers Civil War Letters
from the Front (Amherst, 1991); Donald Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: The Civil
War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana, 1997); Donald Yacovone, The Fifty-Fourth
Massachusetts Regiment, the Pay Crisis, and the Lincoln Despotism, in Blatt, Brown,
and Yacovone, Hope and Glory, 3551.
47. Colonel E. N. Hallowell to Governor John A. Andrew, November 23, 1863, in
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 387; Higginson, Army Life,
appendix D. On the importance of contracts in the Civil War era, see Amy Dru Stanley,
From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave
Emancipation (Cambridge, 1998).
48. Gooding to Lincoln, September 28, 1863, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black
Military Experience, 386 (emphasis in original).
49. Simon Prisby to E. M. Stanton, July 20, 1865, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland,
Black Military Experience, 424. In commenting on a similar incident, another soldier
observed, The treatment we Receive from Our Pretended Friends I think is very Rough
and I hope God will Save me from Such friends. Late Q.M. Sergt. Charles H. Davis to
Capt. E. D. Kennedy, February 21, 1866, in ibid., 429.
50. William J. Brown to the Honourable Secretary of War, April 27, 1864, in Berlin,
Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 37778 (emphasis in original).

Struggles for Republican Liberty

301

51. James A. Seddon to Gen. G. T. Beauregard, November 30, 1862, in Berlin, Reidy,
and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 57172.
52. M. I. Bonham to General G. T. Beauregard, July 22, 1863, in Berlin, Reidy, and
Rowland, Black Military Experience, 57980.
53. Quoted in Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston, 1953), 18.
54. General Orders No. 252, War Department, Adjutant Generals Ofce, July 31,
1863, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 583.
55. See William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill, 1994), 155.
For treatments of the massacres of black troops at Fort Pillow and Saltville, see John
Cimprich, The Fort Pillow Massacre: Assessing the Evidence, in Smith, Black Soldiers
in Blue, 15068; Thomas D. Mays, The Battle of Saltville, in ibid., 200226. See also
Trudeau, Like Men of War, 15669, 26975.
56. See Yacovone, Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, esp. 4142, which also
notes the negative impact that the families troubles had on the morale of the men.
57. First Sgt. Joseph J. Harris to Gen. Ullman, December 27, 1864, in Berlin, Reidy,
and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 69192.
58. Spotswood Rice to Kitty Diggs, [September 3, 1864], in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 690.
59. See Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and Julie Saville, eds., Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South, ser. 1, vol.
3 of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 18611867 (Cambridge, UK,
1990); Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland,
and Julie Saville, eds., Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South, ser. 1, vol. 2 of
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 18611867 (Cambridge, UK,
1993). See also Patricia C. Click, Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmens
Colony (Chapel Hill, 2001); Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath
of Slavery (New York, 1979), esp. 64103; Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in
Slavery and Freedom, 17501925 (New York, 1976), esp. 363431.
60. Colonel A. Jackson to Major Genl. Rosecrans, February 17, 1864, in Berlin, Reidy,
and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 241.
61. Martha Glover to My Dear Husband [Richard Glover], December 30, 1863, in
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 244.
62. Afdavit of Patsy Leach, March 25, 1865, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black
Military Experience, 244, 268.
63. For representative works illustrating the postwar manifestations of African American womens struggles for citizenship, see Elizabeth Regosin, Freedoms Promise: ExSlave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation (Charlottesville, 2002); Laura
F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction
(Urbana, 1997); Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Womens Transition from
Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana, 1997); Elsa Barkley Brown, Negotiating
and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition
from Slavery to Freedom, Public Culture 7 (1994): 10746.
64. For a pioneering study of post-traumatic stress in Civil War soldiers, see Eric T.
Dean, Jr., Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Cambridge, 1997).

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Joseph P. Reidy

65. First Sergeant John Sweeny to Brigadier General Fisk, October 8, 1865, in Berlin,
Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 615.
66. Chaplain C. W. Buckley to Lt. Austin R. Mills, February 1, 1865, in Berlin, Reidy,
and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 623.
67. Chaplain E. W. Wheeler to Brig. Genl. Ullmann, April 8, 1864, in Berlin, Reidy,
and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 618.
68. Studies of regiments from the northern states include Versalle F. Washington,
Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War (Columbia, 1999);
Edward A. Miller Jr., The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois (Columbia, 1998); James
M. Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom: The 6th United States Colored Infantry in the
Civil War (Shippensburg, PA, 1998); James Kenneth Bryant II, The Model 36th Regiment: The Contribution of Black Soldiers and Their Families to the Union War Effort,
18611866 (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 2001).
69. White ofcers of Colored Troop regiments had a vested interest in promoting
literacy as well. Illiterate noncommissioned ofcers might still lead the men serving under
them, but they could not complete the paperwork that made up a large part of the
responsibilities of their counterparts in regiments where literacy was the norm. As a
result, ofcers often had to assume the burden.
70. Theodore Rosengarten, All Gods Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York,
1974), 26668, recounts an incident during the 1920s in which Ned Cobbs literate wife
advised him against signing mortgage papers that would have subjected all they possessed
to seizure.
71. Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 184, quotes Douglass. For insights into the
broader history of citizenship rights in the nineteenth century, see Alexander Keyssar, The
Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York,
2000), chaps. 14; Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York, 1998),
chaps. 25.
72. Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom; Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil
War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge, 2001), 102
7, 13033, 13738, 18191.
73. For Maryland, see Charles L. Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 18621864 (Baltimore, 1964); Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and
Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven,
1985). For Missouri, see William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the
Union, 18611865 (Columbia, 1963). For Tennessee, see John Cimprich, Slaverys End
in Tennessee, 18611865 (University, AL, 1985). Two neighboring states provide fascinating contrasts: for that of Kentucky, see Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in
Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 18621884 (Lexington, 1983); for that of Iowa,
see Robert R. Dykstra, Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the
Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge, 1993).
74. Andrew Tait et al. to the Union Convention of Tennessee, January 9, 1865, in
Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 81116, quotations at 81112.
75. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: Americas Unnished Revolution (New York, 1988)
treats the Ku Klux Klan (42544) and general political development among the freedpeople (77123).

Struggles for Republican Liberty

303

76. Eric Foner, Freedoms Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Ofceholders During

Reconstruction (New York, 1993), xixxxii; King, Wounds That Bind.
77. See Berlin, Fields, Glymph, Reidy, and Rowland, Destruction of Slavery, 493659;
Vorenberg, Final Freedom, 21618, 23132.
78. See David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge, 2001); Nick Salvatore, We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos
Webber (New York, 1996); Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army
of the Republic, 18651900 (Chapel Hill, 1992).
79. Donald R. Schaffer, Marching On: African-American Civil War Veterans in Postbellum America, 18651951, Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1996.

Armed Slaves and Anticolonial Insurgency in

Late Nineteenth-Century Cuba
ada ferrer

On October 10, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, a lawyer, sugar

planter, and slaveholder in eastern Cuba, gathered the slaves on his sugar mill,
La Demajagua, and granted them their freedom. You are as free, he told
them, as I am. Then, addressing them as citizens, he invited them to help
conquer liberty and independence for Cuba. Thus began the rst war for
Cuban independence: with an act that highlighted the central link between the
institution of slavery and the process of national liberation, between armed
slaves and anticolonial struggle.
The existence and importance of this link should come as little surprise. As
Robin Blackburn has shown for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, freedom from slavery and freedom from colonial rule may have been
two distinct political and social projects, but in the Age of Revolution they
often became intertwined as successive challenges to the regimes of colonial
slavery [led] to the destruction either of the colonial relationship, or of the
slave system, or of both, in one after another of all the major New World
colonies. In the case of Cuba, the preservation of colonial rule had long been
linked to the institution of slavery. During the Age of Revolution, when almost
every other Spanish territory freed itself from imperial rule, Cuba survived as
Spains ever-faithful isle. The preservation of sugar, slavery, and the prosperous plantation economy they engendered depended, elites agreed, on the

304

Armed Slaves

305

continuation of the colonial bond. To opt for independence was to risk social
upheaval and economic annihilation. This association between slavery and
colonial order remained strong for much of the nineteenth century. Thus when
in 1868 creole elites decided to challenge the colonial regime, slavery became a
major issue in their efforts, as nationalist insurgency and the institution of
slavery each threatened to disrupt the other in signicant ways.
The centrality and complexity of the link between slavery and insurrection
assumed multiple forms. First, slaves themselves became enmeshed in the process of anticolonial struggle, as both the colonial army and the nationalist
rebels mobilized them for their respective causes. But alongside the arming of
slaves by contending political camps emerged the symbolic use of the gure of
the armed slave in colonial and anticolonial discourse. The conicts that arose
from that unprecedented military and discursive mobilizationas slaves took
up arms, ed plantations, freed their peers, or burnt sugar cane, and as they
were written into emerging narratives of nationhoodprofoundly shaped the
course of Cuban independence and the possibilities for black political action
in postemancipation Cuba. This chapter analyzes both aspects of this revolutionary arming of slaves: rst, the military mobilization in support of independence and then their discursive mobilization, also in support of independence.
Throughout, it highlights the limits and contradictions of this dual process, as
rebel leaders and the enslaved struggled to dene the boundaries, meanings,
and implications of the arming of slaves.
When the principal conspirators of October 10, 1868, declared Cuban sovereignty, they began by freeing and mobilizing their own slaves for war. The
initial leadership of the war against Spain came from the ranks of slaveowning
whites in eastern regions such as Bayamo and Manzanillo, where slavery was
becoming less central to the economy and where the slave population was a
relatively small proportion of the total population (between 3 and 9 percent
depending on the jurisdiction). The declining position of slavery in these
regions helps explain the leaders willingness to risk social upheaval and their
ritualized freeing and arming of their own slaves in the rst public act of rebellion. Yet this revolutionary arming of slaves had obvious limits. Prominent
leaders liberated their slaves immediately, but the movement as a movement
advocated only a very gradual abolition. This abolition, moreover, would
indemnify owners, and it would occur only after the successful conclusion of
the war. This hesitation betrayed the contradictions inherent in the position
and mission of the local leadership of the early period of the war. From the
start, Cspedes and his colleagues recognized that they would have to reconcile their need to attract slaves, so as to have the soldiers necessary to
wage war, with their need to attract slaveholders, so as to have the resources

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required to nance that war. They had to portray their movement as in the best
interest of two groups whose objectives were apparently irreconcilable. The
early leaders of the movement believed that the solution to this quandary lay
in the exercise of restraint, and the leaders expression of a desire for abolition, gradual and indemnied exemplied that moderation. If justice demanded the emancipation of slaves, argued insurgent leaders, then fairness
also required that cooperative slaveholders be compensated for their loss.
Nationalist leaders admitted that the initial hesitation regarding slavery
was, in part, the result of political strategy. Thus Cspedes explained to fellow
nationalists that although he was a staunch abolitionist, the need to remove
all obstacles to the early progress of the revolution forced [him] to delay the
immediate emancipation of slaves and to proclaim in [his] manifesto a gradual
and indemnied [abolition]. At the same time, his explanation of the delays
in enacting a more comprehensive program for emancipation reveals something of his misgivings about the exercise of full political and social freedom by
men and women who had lived their lives enslaved. Thus he explained to those
same colleagues: The emancipation of slavery is not yet a fait accompli because I have wanted to prepare it so that as the new citizens enter into the full
exercise of their rights, they do so at least modestly trained to understand the
proper meaning of true liberty. Abolition, therefore, would be gradual and
cautious, and the transition from slavery to freedom would be conducted
under the tutelage of rebel leadership in the battles against Spain.
The policy concerning abolition adopted on October 10, precisely because
it was so modest, had obvious tactical advantages. It offered, above all, the
potential to appease the groups whose support for war was most necessary.
For in the promise of a gradual and indemnied emancipation, slaveholders
heard that no nancial loss would occur for the time being and that whatever
loss might occur at some later moment would be compensated. Meanwhile,
slaves, whose only promise of freedom prior to October 10 had been in manumission or in a risky attempt at ight, heard that a rebellion had started and
that, should the rebels win, they would all be free.
This cautious balancing act, born of the need to make the war feasible,
became one of the rst casualties of that war. The limited and carefully maneuvered intentions of a handful of leaders could not determine the direction the
rebellion would take once initiated. Spanish authorities immediately observed
this gap between the initial designs of the conspirators and the actions of the
rebels. Only two weeks after the start of the insurrection, the islands Spanish
governor observed: I have no doubt that the instigators of the uprising, conceived of something limited . . . but the fact that shortly after their uprising,
they began to burn sugar mills and take the slaves as free men, in effect rais[ed]

Armed Slaves

307

the issue of the social question and arous[ed] . . . the spirit of people of color.
Leaders tried to curb the dangers of social unrest that might be unleashed by
their declarations and to reassure landowners whose support they courted
that their property, in people and in land, would be spared by the insurrection.
Days after the outbreak of rebellion, Cspedes promised that the rebel army
would respect the lives and property of all and treat everyone with equal
consideration. At the end of the rst month of war, he expressly forbade
ofcers to accept any slaves into their ranks without his own permission or
that of their masters. Two weeks later he went further, decreeing that any
rebel caught stealing from peaceful citizens or raiding farms to take slaves or
to incite them to rebellion would be tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to
death by the rebel administration.
These measures and reassurances, however, did not entirely work. Cspedess decree did not prevent insurgents on the ground from taking slaves to
the insurrection against the wishes of hesitant slaveholders. All over the rural
outskirts of Santiagoan eastern region more invested in slavery and where
landowners did not lead or heed the call to rebellion in 1868owners who
tried to maintain production on their coffee and sugar farms saw their efforts
thwarted by insurgents who burnt their elds and liberated and took their
slaves. Across the regions of Santiago and Guantnamo, insurgents attacked
estates and farms, andwith or without the consent of the slaves themselves
liberated slaves so that they might in some manner aid the cause of insurrection. In December 1868, a group of 153 rebels stormed the coffee farm San
Fernando, outside Guantnamo, and took thirty able-bodied slaves. In January 1869, insurgents invaded the sugar estate Santsima Trinidad de Giro near
Cobre, set re to the cane elds, and took all eighty-seven slaves. Countless
others were taken in the same manner.
Slaves, however, did not necessarily require prodding in order to abandon
the farms of their masters; they could, on their own or in small groups, ee their
farms and volunteer their services to the rebellion. The slave Pedro de la Torre,
for example, presented himself at a rebel camp near Holgun expressing his
desire to sustain the Holy Cause. Jos Manuel, a slave on the coffee farm
Bello Desierto near Cobre, went further, eeing of his own volition to join the
insurrection and then appearing on neighboring farms with copies of rebel
handbills and proclamations of freedom in order to seduce other slaves.
The forced and voluntary induction of large numbers of slaves meant that
leaders could theoretically count on a larger pool of recruits and reap the
military advantages of a growing army. In practice, however, the relationship
between insurgent structures and potentially politicized slaves was less clearcut. For insurgent leaders, the emancipation of slaves and their incorporation

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Ada Ferrer

into armed struggle required that slaves labor, productively and quietly, in
supportive roles. Labor in this fashion would materially aid the rebellion and
also allay fears of social unrest. The tasks given slave men and women in the
insurgency tend to reect this desire on the part of leaders. In fact, most slaves
who were freed from coffee and sugar farms by insurgents and who were later
questioned by authorities testied that they had been put to work building
trenches, clearing paths, and doing a variety of other menial tasks. Few mentioned actual combat experience. The sixty-year-old African-born Marcos,
one-eyed and old, was given the job of peeling plantains for the insurgents.
Many others functioned as servants or asistentes (assistants) whose primary
role was to serve the ofcers to whom they were assigned, cooking, washing,
and attending to their needs. Still, though many slaves were not the protagonists of armed combat, many appear to have exercised their newfound
freedom by embracing the rebel cause perhaps more fervently than their recruiters imagined they would. Some new libertos were beginning to see themselves not as menial laborers but as free persons engaged in armed political
struggle. A freed slave named after his owner, Francisco Vicente Aguilera, who
rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant colonel, for example, clearly did
more than play the part of a dutiful servant. So did the slave Jos Manuel, who
not only joined the movement but also recruited other slaves by publicizing the
rebellions stance on antislavery. A slave identied as Magn faced disciplinary
measures for attempting to take more political initiative than leaders wanted
to concede. Given the straightforward task of delivering a message to an
ofcer at another rebel camp, Magn decided to conscate a horse in order,
perhaps, to complete his mission more expeditiously. When challenged, he
proclaimed unrepentantly that he was a rebel chief and that nobody could
interrupt his journey. That he proudly declared himself to be a rebel leader
with control over his time and movement, if not that of others, suggests that
the insurgency was producing new forms of self-identication for the people it
recruited. At the very least, the insurgency seems to have offered men such as
Magn and Aguilera an arena in which they could assert a degree of mobility
and independence they could not have asserted as rural slaves, even if every
recruit did not have the opportunity or desire physically to take up arms.
These new recruits, however, were singularly problematic gures for the
rebel leadership. Were they free men and women willing to choose the path of
independence? Or were they slaves who could be taken, as rebels took other
property, and forced to work and ght in battleelds, as they had earlier been
coerced to labor in cane and coffee elds? In the uncertainty of 1868 and
beyond there was no simple answer to this question. But one fact soon became

Armed Slaves

309

clear: the growing visibility of slave supporters began to make certain questions unavoidableamong them questions about the nature of slaves incorporation into the armed struggle for sovereignty and into the nation itself. As
the growing presence of slaves made these questions more and more pressing,
the leaders tenuous ideological balancing act became more and more fragile.
And within months of the start of the insurgency, rebel leaders realized that the
transition from slavery to freedom could not be postponed until the end of the
rebellion, as they had rst planned.
Thus, only three months into the war, the leadership modied its original
position regarding abolition, moving beyond the vague promise of indemnied emancipation to occur after the victory of the independence struggle and
outlining several ways in which enslaved men and women could gain immediate freedom. The rst formal step was taken on December 27, 1868, when
Cspedes decreed that all slaves belonging to enemies of their cause would be
considered free and their owners not subject to compensation. Slaves who
presented themselves to rebel authorities with the consent of pro-Cuban owners would be declared free and their owners compensated for their nancial
loss. Separatist slaveholders also reserved the power to lend their enslaved
workers to the insurgent cause, and in so doing they preserved their rights of
ownership until the rebel republic decreed full abolition at some unspecied
moment. Finally, the document stated that runaway slaves presenting themselves to or captured by rebel forces would be returned to their owners, provided that the owners were supporters of the Cuban cause.
Though the decree listed multiple paths to immediate freedom, overall, it
offered only a limited emancipation, accessible only to a fraction of slaves
and, in many cases, valid only with the consent of their masters. Ultimately,
slaveholders who supported the Cuban cause reserved the right to decide, on a
case-by-case basis, whether they would free their slaves. Though individual
conspirators may have undertaken the dramatic act of freeing their own slaves
and addressing them as citizens, the formal policy of the revolution in December 1868 encouraged only manumission, a regular feature of slave society, and
thus, by default, condoned slavery.
The December 1868 decree concerning abolitioncautious, ambiguous,
falteringhad, however, enormous power to attract enslaved men and women
to the cause of national independence. And even this most hesitant of moves
produced among its slave audience, who only months earlier had had little
prospect of freedom, great excitement and indescribable enthusiasm. As a
result, slaves joined the Cuban forces, wrote Cspedes in January 1869, by the
thousands; they marched in companies shouting cries of long live Liberty and

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[long live] the whites of Cuba, who only yesterday had governed them with the
harshness of the whip and who today treat them as brothers and grant them the
title of free men.
Had Cspedes been able to, he might have chosen to stop time at that very
moment, to give permanent life to that instance of mutual satisfaction and
consensus. But instead with every week and month that passed the relations
between slaves and insurgents became more and more complex and the connections between antislavery and anticolonialism more and more entwined.
Modest promises of eventual freedom drew an ever-increasing number of
slaves to the insurrection; their participation then pushed leaders to do more
about abolition. But then, the closer leaders came to the emancipation of
slaves, the more slaves joined; and the larger the number of slaves who joined,
the more urgent and central they made the issue of abolition. The result, then,
was an almost innite and two-way circle of slave and insurgent initiatives and
responses leadinggradually and tfullyto a speedier and more thorough
emancipation than leaders envisioned at the outset and to the consolidation of
an army with growing numbers of slave soldiers.
In this continual back-and-forth between slaves and insurgents and between
slavery and freedom, few policies concerning slaves had limited effects and few
remained in place for long. The conservative decree of December 1868, for
example, was superseded only months later by the rebel constitution drafted
in Guimaro in April 1869. This constitution declared, unequivocally, that
all inhabitants of the Republic [were] entirely free. Article 25 further specied that all citizens of the republic [would be] considered soldiers of the
Liberation Army. Here, then, was legal recognition for the transformation
of enslaved workers into citizens and soldiers of a new republic.
But the path to absolute emancipation in rebel territory was slow and indirect, and just as the presence of slave soldiers could hasten the formal progress of abolition, so, too, could it produce the opposite reaction, as leaders saw
their carefully laid plans for a gradual and tightly supervised abolition unraveled by the actions and desires of a growing population of slave-insurgents.
Thus in July 1869 the leadership backtracked, curtailing the potential effects
of the constitutional proclamation of freedom approved only three months
earlier. First, the rebel legislature amended Article 25. Rather than recognize
all citizens as soldiers, the constitution now required that all citizens of the
republic lend their services according to their aptitudes. No longer would
ofcers be formally required to accept slaves as combatants; now they could,
with the legal sanction of the rebel republic, require them to work in agriculture in camps set up in support of the insurgency or as servants for rebel
leaders or their families.

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Later that same month the rebel legislature drafted the Reglamento de Libertos, which further circumscribed the freedom granted to slaves in the constitution of Guimaro by requiring all libertos in the insurrection to work
without compensation. The reglamento conceded to libertos the right to abandon the homes of their (former) masters. But it went on to state that it was the
responsibility, indeed, the obligation, of such slaves immediately to report to
the Ofce of Libertos so that they might be assigned to other masters whose
side they were not to leave without powerful reasons previously brought to
the attention of authorities. In this way, the leadership preserved its access to
the time, labor, and bodies of enslaved men and women. Pro-Cuban owners or
newly assigned masters meanwhile retained the right to slaves labor and, with
it, the right to reprimand them when necessary, so long as they did so
fraternally. Elite rebel leaders, exhibiting their desire to placate more of
their class, thus aggressively attempted to manage the status and mobility of
slaves and slave recruits in rebel-controlled territory. The multifarious regulations on the labor and movement of slaves persisted until Christmas Day
1870, when Cspedes formally ended the forced labor of libertos, arguing that
although they had been unprepared for liberty in 1868, two years of contact
with the pageantry of our liberties have been sufcient to consider them already regenerated and to grant them independence. Even on paper, however,
this freedom emerged as conditional, for Cspedes added that under no circumstances would freed slaves be allowed to remain idle. Activity and
movement remained subject to insurgents control.
The rebel leaderships early vacillation regarding abolition and slave participation in armed rebellion manifested itself clearly in formal rebel policy.
But the lapses and bursts in abolitionist initiatives from the rebel leadership
resulted not only from ideological conviction or political calculation. They
also emerged from the interaction of slaves and insurgents, and between commanders and subalterns, in the camps and battleelds of rebel territory. This
interaction could be strained and volatile, for at issue was not only the meaning of the freedom promised by insurgents and sought by slaves but also the
question of who would dene its boundaries.
When Cspedes originally deferred the abolition of slavery, he conded in private that he believed that Cuban slaves were not yet trained for freedom. The
war, he implied, would have to serve as a classroom where newly freed slaves
would be trained to understand the proper meaning of true liberty. Cspedess choice of words should not be surprising, for white emancipators
whether British policymakers in Jamaica or northern soldiers in the U.S. South
nearly always spoke of the transition from slavery to freedom with meta-

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phors of learning; hence the name apprenticeship to denote the transitional

period between slave and free labor in the British colonies. The emancipators
tutelage focused customarily on teaching slaves to sell their labor to others for
a wage. But in Cuba, in the midst of armed rebellion for national sovereignty
and surrounded everywhere by their own declarations of freedom and equality, nationalist leaders attempted to modify the customary sphere of that tutelage. They were not primarily training free laborers. Leaders saw themselves
as training free (and industrious) soldiers and citizens. In their efforts, however,
insurgent and republican leaders revealed the extent to which they sought to
distinguish the freedom of former slaves from their own. They revealed it, as
we have seen, in assigning libertos to masters, in establishing ofces to supervise their movements, and in writing laws requiring them to work. They also
revealed it in their daily contact with slave-insurgents.
Direct contact between slaves and insurgents often began at the moment of
recruitment. In inducting slaves into the movement, military leaders regularly
found themselves in the position of explaining the objectives of the rebellion to
the new recruits. For example, when insurgents entered estates to mobilize
slaves, they assembled the slave forces and gave speeches about the meaning of
the insurrection and its relation to the abolition of slavery. Military leaders,
initially anxious for the support of landholders, attempted to exert a moderating inuence during these talks. Given the opportunity, then, many represented the revolution and emancipation in ways that would appeal to slaves
desire for emancipation yet also temper the freedom they promised. Thus,
early in the rebellion, two leaders whose forces included many liberated slaves,
Mximo Gmez and Donato Mrmol, in return for the cooperation of slaveholders, promised slaves eventual freedom but also explained to them the
insurmountable problems that sudden abolition would create for them and
the immense benets that would come with gradual, but prompt, abolition
an abolition ennobled by and ennobling of work, honesty, and well-being.
In recruiting slaves with this sort of preamble, leaders asked them for patience
in their desire for freedom. They also provided something of a partial denition of freedom: freedom from slavery and participation in armed insurgency
did not imply the freedom not to work.
The insurgent colonel Juan Cancino, who owned one slave, was somewhat
more subtle in the way he proposed to address potential slave recruits. He
explained to fellow insurgents that he planned to attract some slaves from
Manzanillo to [their] ranks by promising them that if they take up arms
against Spain they will be free, given that it was that very government which
had enslaved them. Cancinos plan had the advantage of attracting slaves
by identifying a common enemy in Spain. More important, however, the plan

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had the advantage of portraying the rebels as benevolent liberators who would
end the rule of the enslavers and grant freedom to all the slaves. Implicitly,
then, mobilized slaves owed gratitude to their liberators.
This strategylike Gmez and Marmols speechesrepresented more than
insurgent abolitionism. It also represented a means of enlarging the rebel army
and a potential avenue for managing newly freed slaves by encouraging gratitude and subservience to rebel leaders and structures. To represent themselves
as liberators and to encourage the indebtedness and patience of slaves-turnedsoldiers was to attempt to control and mediate the transition from slavery to
freedom.
Insurgents messages of gratitude, restraint, and forbearance, however, were
less discernible to slaves than was the message of emancipation. And when
slaves later described these talks by insurgent leaders, what appeared to impress
them most was the promise of freedom. Public authorities recognized as much
when they reported that slaves were being forcibly extracted from their farms
not with guns and threats but with deceit and promises. When Zacaras
Priol, a suspected insurgent and a former slave on a coffee farm near Santiago,
was captured by the Spanish, he offered his captors routine testimony: he and
other slaves on the farm had been taken by force by Cuban insurgents. Priol
implied, as had many other captured slaves, that he had merely obeyed the
insurgents order to leave as promptly as he had earlier obeyed his masters
order to stay and work. Slaves were not alone in making such claims. Almost all
individuals caught and tried by Spanish authorities for participating in the
rebellion attempted to avoid punishment by testifying that they were taken
against their will and under threats of death by bands of insurgents.
The details Priol provided his interrogator about that seemingly forcible
extraction demonstrated, however, that a much more complex and ambiguous process was unfolding. Priol explained to his Spanish audience that the
rebel general Donato Mrmol arrived on his farm, gathered about forty of the
male slaves, and made them take a vow to the Caridad del Cobre (later the
patron saint of Cuba), presumably to show that they understood that if the
insurrection triumphed all the slaves would be free. After taking their vow,
they all followed [the general] to Sabanilla, where the insurgents had assembled about nine thousand people. In giving his testimony, Priol chose to say
that the slaves went with rather than were taken by the rebels and that it
was the rebel promise of freedom that precipitated their ight. Though Mrmol specied to them that freedom would come only with the triumphant end
of the insurrection, this could be little consolation to the slaveholders whose
slaves had just become insurgents. Thus even Mrmol, one of the ofcers who
had promised to encourage forbearance among slaves, was unable to mute the

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essence of the rebel message: that anticolonial rebellion had suddenly made
freedom from slavery a palpable prospect.
Much to the dismay of unconverted owners, other rebel leaders were signicantly less discreet in the way they represented imminent freedom to enslaved
workers. At the ingenio (sugar mill) San Luis, near Santiago, a small group of
insurgents arrived and, with the help of the mayoral (overseer), took some of
the estates slaves (including women and children) to the insurrection. One of
these slaves, Eduardo, was later caught with weapons in his hands. Not
surprisingly, he testiedmuch as Zacaras Priol hadthat the insurgents
had taken him and the others by force. The insurgents, he added, had forced
them all to carry weapons: They had no choice but to take them, he insisted.
He explained that the insurgents gave each slave one machete, which they
were to sharpen every day, as much for working as for killing the patones.
(Patones, literally big-feet, was a pejorative label used by Cubans to describe
Spaniards.) This insurgent leader dened slaves freedom as the obligation to
labor but also as the privilege to make war. Eduardo also testied that the
rebels told them to kill all the patones in Cuba, so that they would all be free
and then they would no longer have to say mi amo or mi Seor (my master or
my lord). Rebels promised slaves their freedom and then produced examples
of its day-to-day exercise. The slave who described this speech did not dwell
on any appeals for patience and moderation. Rather, his interpretation of the
rebels public statements led him to believe that his actions now, in labor
and in combat, would produce new conditionsconditions under which he
would no longer have to be subservient to the men who had formerly ruled
over him. His recollection of the rebel sermon captured perfectly the multiple
and often contradictory messages contained in rebels call to arms for slaves:
the promise of a freedom that would entail the right to ght and the opportunity to shed some of the habits of deference and submission central to slave
society, but a freedom dened as well by unremunerated labor.
Insurgent leaders and slave recruits clearly disagreed about the boundaries
of the new freedom, and these differences of opinion made the question of
discipline a major concern of rebel practice. The Liberation Army established
a disciplinary apparatus that mirrored the Spanish system of military tribunals. Insurgents caught stealing, deserting, or showing disrespect to their ofcers were tried in consejos de guerra. Slaves, though technically subject to
this system of discipline, were also likely to receive punishment outside this
formal legal network. Slaves questioned by colonial authorities made frequent
references to being put in stocks in insurgent camps, and rebel ofcers, anxious to control slaves behavior, often referred to the need to punish wayward
libertos publicly, even suggesting giving them a good beating as an example

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to the others. Insurgent leaders thus punished new behaviors encouraged by

novel conditions with old and familiar methods of slave discipline.
These methods, which epitomized leaders attempts to limit slave autonomy
and to regulate the transition from slavery, in fact, produced the contrary
effect. Disciplinary measures encouraged the very behavior insurgent leaders
sought to suppress. For as slaves saw that insurgents who had promised them
freedom now sought to delay its practice, they were moved to ee from rebel
camps. Individual and small groups of slaves moved through the countryside,
anxious to avoid capture by insurgents, only to be seized by the Spanish. For
example, in only four days Spanish troops picked up 108 slaves who were
identied as having ed from eastern coffee farms. Not only did the insurgents lose these potential soldiers and workers, they often lost them to Spanish
troops, who used them in services appropriate to the condition of slaves.
In mid1870 the captain general of the island reported to the colonial minister
that, in one case, 32 slaves had surrendered to Spanish authorities, allegedly
saying unanimously that they preferred by far to be Spanish slaves than to be
free mambs.
Although this alleged statement certainly would have served the slaves
interests at the moment of surrendering to the Spanish, some slaves did, in
fact, serve in the Spanish army. Many served in roles not unlike those they
had had in the Cuban rebel army: stretcher-bearers, cooks, or trench diggers.
Slaves who served in the Spanish army were potentially eligible for their freedom after lengthy interrogations by authorities. In fact, it appears that many
of those serving the colonial army had rst been drafted into the war by the
rebels and then ended upby choice, circumstance, or forceswitching sides
and serving in the Spanish army.
Most slaves who ed from the insurrection, however, struggled just as energetically to avoid the Spanish military camps. Some formed small communities
of ex-slaves or joined palenques, preexisting communities of fugitive slaves
living in mountainous regions outside the control of both the plantations and
the rebel state. The relations between these groups of fugitive slaves and the
Cuban insurgent movement highlights the contradictions that emerged in the
relations between slaves and insurgents more generally. Cspedess decree of
December 1868 had accorded freedom to palenque slaves, giving them the
right to join and live with the insurgents or, if they preferred, to remain in their
own communities, recognizing and respecting the Government of the Revolution. In practice, however, relations between these fugitives and insurgent
military ofcers were very strained.
Rebel leaders, knowing of the existence of the palenques, preferred that the
services of these groups aid them rather than their Spanish enemies. They also

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hoped that by initiating the apalencados (palenque members) into the struggle
for independence, they would also inculcate in them the habits of a republican
polity. Thus insurgents became increasingly intolerant of what they perceived
as the palenques continued lack of discipline, their refusal of civilization.
According to one rebel ofcer, the maroons were more given to chanting than
to ghting and became such a dangerous and fatal plague that insurgent
leaders were soon forced to capture their leaders and publicly and summarily
try them in military tribunals. The ofcer added that these maroons were
hunted energetically to force them to lend services to the republic, since from
miserable slaves they had come to be free citizens. This Cuban ofcer captured perfectly the nature of the relationship between the white separatist and
the black slave. The separatist saw himself proudly as a liberator who had
taken brute slaves and converted them to citizens, patriots, and soldiers of
liberty. Yet the separatist clearly saw the slave as a special sort of citizen
one who, in some instances, was still subject to being hunted and, in all, was
still subject to the appropriation of his or her labor and time in the service of
nationhood.
The process of arming slaves in the context of anticolonial insurgency in Cuba
shares certain features with other cases examined in this book. As in the
French Antilles during the Age of Revolution or the U.S. South during the Civil
War, the armers of slaves (of various political persuasions) sought to manage and control the process of arming them, to use the power of armed slaves
for their own interests in defense, war-making, or state formation. Consistently, they sought to delimit the power that slaves acquired from their mobilization. Whether slaves were armed by the state to defend a colony or by rebels
to wage war against a colonist, they were to serve loyally, in a way that
preserved or secured the power of those who armed them but that did not
allow them to overstep the cautious freedoms granted them in the process.
Consistently, however, armed slaves sought to push against the limits set by
their armers, using their service to argue for greater rewards, taking initiatives
to secure or expand newfound privileges, and redening on the ground and in
daily practice the boundaries of the freedom suggested in the very process of
arming them.
Yet the story of the arming of slaves in revolutionary Cuba cannot end there.
For the arming of slaves, already a complex and contentious process in and of
itself, unfolded within a broader colonial context. Contention and conict
over this arming affected the very course of insurgency. But the arming of
slaves produced contention and uncertainty not only in the daily practice of
war. It also produced a broader argument about the consequences of that

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mobilization for the construction of nationhood itself. Spanish authorities,

faced with the widespread and unprecedented mobilization of enslaved black
men for anticolonial ends, responded by constantly invoking the charge of
racial warfare and resurrecting the image of a Haitian-style apocalypse. And
white insurgents were capable of being swayed by such arguments. Indeed,
over the course of ten years of warfare, and in the peace and subsequent armed
attempts that followed, a good number of white Cubans rejected independence on the basis of its alleged links to racial warfare. Cuban opponents of
independence, as well as former insurgents turned loyalists, when placed in the
position of explaining their own political choices, tended to characterize the
independence movement as black. And it was precisely in that blackness that
some white insurgents located the rebellions threat to the future of Cuban
society. Thus if the arming of slaves served key strategic and ideological purposes, it also raised issues and anxieties that threatened the cohesiveness and
clarity of the bid for independence.
This pattern crystallized at several key moments in the history of anticolonial insurgency. For example, in 187071 in Puerto Prncipe, a key theater
of the war and immediately west of where the war began, a crisis ensued as
more and more rebels abandoned the rebellion and a good number offered
their services to the colonial state. In purporting to explain the reasons for
their surrender to Spanish authorities, repentent insurgents gave center stage
to the question of race. According to one declaration made by surrendering
insurgents, the powerful local rebel movement, which had counted on three or
four thousand armed men and thirty to thirty-ve thousand sympathizers in
the countryside, had been reduced to three or four hundred men, blacks in
their majority. And it was this state of affairsthe literal blackening of
insurgencythat many surrendering insurgents in the region highlighted
when explaining their decision to retreat from insurgency. Colonial appeals to
racial fear and white anxiety about political power were perhaps now more
resonant than ever, given that they were made in the context of a rebellion that
mobilized slaves and free people of color.
Though this pattern was particularly dramatic and noticeable in Puerto
Prncipe in the early 1870s, the insurgencys crisis in that region cannot be seen
as a singular aberration, for controversy and division over issues of slave
mobilization and multiracial insurgency manifested themselves, to different
degrees and in different forms, even in areas and among leaders unwilling to
renounce the cause of independence. Cspedes, for example, who began the
rebellion and who fought until his death in 1874, was not immune to doubts
and not unwilling to act on his misgivings. In this case, however, acting on
those misgivings entailed not surrender but the search for protection from the

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United States. Thus in 1869 Cspedes wrote to nationalist colleagues in the

United States: [I]n the minds of a majority of Cubans . . . is always the idea of
annexation as a last resort, in order to avoid the abyss of evils which they say
would lead to a war of the races. And a week later he described the state of
the rebellion in these words: The blacks in large numbers are ghting in our
ranks; [and] those of us with weapons in our hands are convinced that [it] is
becoming necessary to ask for annexation to those important States. The
scourge of surrenders may have been particular to Puerto Prncipe, but the
doubts and worries that motivated them seemed to be present in the very
center of the revolution.
The revolution, however, survived the crisis and lasted until 1878. The
treaty that ended the war, which was accepted by rebel leaders, mainly white,
in Puerto Prncipe and rejected by many black and mulatto leaders from farther east, granted neither abolition nor independence. It granted freedom only
to the slaves who had served either in the insurrection or in support of the
Spanish colonial army.
Although the rebellion had failed to achieve abolition, by freeing and mobilizing slaves it had altered forever the social relations of slavery. Spanish
authorities recognized that slave-insurgents, if forced to return to their farms,
were likely to demoralize the slave forces and become fugitives. They
sought to diminish the problem by freeing slaves who had served in the Cuban army. But this policy created profound contradictions. As one prominent
sugar planter had asked earlier: What logic, what justice can there be in
having those [slaves] who were loyal to their owners remain in slavery, while
their malicious companions, instead of receiving the severe punishment that
their wicked conduct deserves, get instead the valuable prize of liberty?
Despite these objections, the freedom of rebel slaves was enacted by Spain;
the policy freed about sixteen thousand slaves. The process set in motion
by the insurgency and the peace treaty had committed Spain to abolish slavery sooner rather than latera fact which meant that slaves could associate
emancipation as much with nationalist insurgency as with any abolitionist
policy of the colonial state. And, in fact, after nal emancipation came by law
in 1886, former slaves were said to proclaim proudly that they were freed not
by the governments decree of emancipation but by their own participation in
the war and by the convenio of 1878, which recognized their liberty as a reward for that participation. Decades later two former slaves named Genaro
Lucum and Irene would gather neighborhood children in the small town of
Chirigota in Pinar del Ro to tell them stories about the end of slavery and
about Antonio Maceo, the famous mulatto general who began the war in
1868 as a private, rose through the ranks almost immediately, and died in

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battle in 1896 during Cubas third war of independence against Spain. Still
others heard stories about another former slave who, having acquired his
freedom, changed his name to Cuba. Insurgency and nationalism had become central to former slaves efforts to give meaning to their freedom; the
link between antislavery and anticolonialism was inviolably established.
The war transformed Cuban society in other ways as well. The insurrection
had emerged from and erupted into a colonial slave society in which race
and nation had been negatively associated. The Cuban race question had
been used to provide an automatic and negative answer to the Cuban national question: the numerical signicance of the nonwhite population and
the economic signicance of slavery necessitated the continuation of a colonial
bond with Spain. With the outbreak of the insurrection in 1868, the link
between race and nation was thrust to the foreground, demanding fresh resolution. The initiators of the rebellion attempted to resolve it by introducing
cautious measures toward achieving abolition. These partial measures were
soon superseded by the day-to-day practice of insurgency, as slaves joined
rebel forces of their own volition and as local leaders emancipated them without the consent of central rebel authority. The movement seemed to suggest
that slaves could become soldiers and citizens and that a slave colony could
become a free nation.
As the rebellion progressed, however, it became clear that the relation between race and nation could not be transformed without struggle and dissent.
The response to widespread black participation (and to the emergence of
powerful black and mulatto leadership) was, for many white insurgents, withdrawal from and condemnation of the rebellion as destructive of Cubas best
interests. Although insurgents who surrendered were still partial to the idea of
Cuban independence, they rejected the early movements implications for racial politics in post-independence Cuba.
When a new anticolonial insurgency erupted a year later in August 1879,
this tension between black mobilization and white fear again assumed a central role. The new war, known as the Guerra Chiquita or Little War because it
lasted less than a year, again mobilized massive numbers of slaves. In this
insurrection, slave mobilization and black leadership assumed an even more
important role than they had in the earlier war. First, black slaves who remained on plantations and farms saw their fellow slaves who had rebelled in
186878 freed for their participation in armed insurgency. With that precedent set, the payoffs of rebellion seemed larger and surer than ever before. In
1879, then, eastern slaves were said to profess that they wanted their freedom
like the convenidos, the slaves freed in the treaty ending the rst war. In the
rst two months of the new war, almost 800 slaves escaped their workplaces

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to join the insurrection. Rebels, meanwhile, put the total number of fugitive
slaves at ve thousand. From the outset, then, slaves played a more prominent
role in this insurrection than in the rst. Likewise, the principal military leaders on the island were men of color. As the war went on, Spanish opponents
increasingly used the issue of racial warfare to detract from the movement and
to alienate potential white support. Published lists of captured insurgents strategically omitted the names of white rebels so that, according to the local
Spanish governor, white Cubans would see race and not independence as the
crux of the armed movement. They used such tactics to elicit white surrenders
and then went further, making pardon on surrender contingent on the whites
public denunciation of the racist motives of their comrades of color. This
tactic, which responded in part to the perceived blackness of the rebellion,
then helped make the rebellion that much blacker, which led to more surrenders, and then to stronger evidence of its blackness, in turn.
The failures of these two insurrections, though complex and multifaceted,
revealed the effective power of the label of racial warfare. Spanish ofcials and
their Cuban allies used the allegation that the independence movement was a
black movementa real threat of another Haiti. They used the allegation
because it worked; that is, it served to qualify support for insurrection. In the
aftermath of two failed insurgencies, rebels came to realize that in order to
succeed at anticolonial insurgency they had to invalidate traditional claims
about the racial risks of rebellion; they had to construct an effective counterclaim to arguments that for almost a century had maintained that Cuba was
unsuited to nationhood. The power to represent oneself, they had come to
realize, was nothing other than political power itself. The struggle for that
power of representation required that nationalist leaders reconceptualize nationality, blackness, and the place of people of color in the would-be nation. In
the process, black, mulatto, and white patriot-intellectuals constructed powerful and eloquent expressions of a new and antiracist nationality. In this reconstruction the gure of the armed slave played a preeminent role.
As part of a response to the Spanish portrait of the Cuban rebellions as race
wars, separatist writers in the interlude between the second and third insurrections and in the years following nal emancipation in 1886 conducted a sweeping reevaluation of the role of the black insurgent in the process of making the
nation. This act of reexamination involved, on one hand, telling stories about
the everyday activities of unknown slave insurgents in the Ten Years War. On
the other hand, it involved the formulation of an ideal black insurgent who
rose above others in acts of seless (and, as we shall see, raceless) patriotism.
In the process, the gure of the slave insurgent, dreaded emblem of race war

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and black republic, was neutralized and made an acceptableindeed, central

component in the struggle for Cuban nationhood.
One apparent beneciary of this process of neutralization was an elderly
slave named Ramn, who went from being the cause of the death of Carlos
Manuel de Cspedes, the leader of the rst insurrection, to being a faithful
and trustworthy slave with no connection to the father of the patria. In
the 1870s and 1880s, the conventional account of Cspedess death maintained that his whereabouts had been revealed to Spanish troops by an aging
former slave named Ramn, who betrayed the liberator of slaves in exchange
for his personal freedom. (One variant of the story held that a slave named
Robert had denounced Cspedes in exchange for his life when captured by
Spanish forces). In the 1890s, as independence activists prepared the ideological and political groundwork for a new rebellion, several new accounts
appeared to disavow these theories. The new accounts maintained that the
elderly Ramn, known to everyone in the area as Pap Ramn, did not
know Cspedes and played no role whatsoever in his death. The Spanish
soldiers who killed Cspedes were, in fact, surprised to learn that they had
killed the president of the Cuban Republic. And this surprise, the new theories
maintained, revealed that Cspedess whereabouts could not have been disclosed by a slave or by anyone else.
The reformulation of the story is signicant within the context of the 1890s.
Cspedes, though censured by some of the independence movement for favoring the military rather than the civilian elements of the revolution, was still
recognized as the heroic father of the incipient nation. His most compelling act
had been the granting of freedom to his slaves, who then joined the new Cuban
army. That he might have been murdered as a result of betrayal by an ungrateful slave could only help sustain those who invoked the dangers of insurrection
and independence. In the retelling of the story in the nineties, the elderly
soldier wept desperately over his role in Cspedess death, but everyone
around him consoled him, certain of the honor and total innocence of the
poor and valiant old man. Thus Ramnsuspected Judaswas reappropriated and transformed into the benign Pap Ramn.
The slave insurgent portrayed in proindependence writings of the 1890s
was, however, more than merely safe or unthreatening; he was also a Cuban
hero and patriot. Examples of depictions of slave insurgents as benign heroes
abounded at this time. Among the most eloquent perhaps was the 1892
portrayal of a black insurgent named Jos Antonio Legn by rebel-turnedauthor Ramon Roa. Roa described a childlike and submissive slave-turnedinsurgent. He represented the pre-war Legn thus: This, our Jos Antonio
Legn, [was] of average stature, astounding agility, imponderable sagacity,

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and an audacity, of which he himself was unaware, just as a child is unaware of

his mischief. When the revolution began in Sanct Spritus he was a negrito,
the slave of a Cuban who supported ideas of independence for his native
land. Roa explained that Legn fought with valor and enthusiasm for the
Cuban cause until his master was killed by Spanish forces. Then he became
taciturn and preoccupied, concerned only with destroying his enemy, as if he
wanted to avenge a personal offense. Still, he fought fearlessly, and soon scars
everywhere interrupted the blackness of his skin. He was eventually captured by the Spanish and, given the option of deserting and saving his life, he
responded: Well, when my masterwho raised me and who was good
passed away, he told me: Jos Antonio, never stop being Cuban, and the poor
man left this world for another. Now I comply by being Cuban until the
end. . . . You can kill me if you want. And kill him they did. But the soldier
they murdered was not the same slave who had joined the rebellion months
earlier. For in the course of ghting the war, Legn had gone from being un
negrito and a slave to being simply Cuban. Even his black body had been
lightened by the numerous scars of Cuba Libre. He had not, however, demanded this transformation from black slave to Cuban soldier and citizen for
himself. Rather, he was freed by a benevolent master who, on his death,
expressed his wish that Legn be and remain Cuban. By resisting the authority
of Spain, he was thus consecrating the wishes of his master. In this manner, the
rebellion of the armed slaves was rendered unthreatening because their military action was represented as an outcome of their masters will and not of
personal initiative or political conviction.
Opponents of independence, and even some of its proponents, had long
characterized the black insurgent as a threat. In the 1890s, independence
propagandists painted a different insurgent of color: one who felt himself to
be, and who was recognized by his fellow soldiers as, Cuban. And as a Cuban,
who naturally loved his country, he fought valiantly. Furthermore, when the
slaves master was a Cuban insurgent, his love of country could be portrayed
as an extension of his love for his former master. Like Legn, the armed slaves
that populated nationalist writings of the period were all characters who obediently complied with their duties as soldiersand as servantsof the Cuban
nation. Politically, they would be incapable of imagining a black republic.
Moreover, they posed no threat of social disorder. Even with weapons in his
hands, the black insurgent of the pro-independence writings respected the
norms that relegated him to an inferior social status. Thus Manuel Sanguily, a
prominent Havana journalist and a white veteran of the Ten Years War,
painted a vivid portrait of deferential black insurgents. Writing of the daily
interactions between white and nonwhite insurgents in the war, he argued that

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boundaries were never confused, nor were natural differences erased, nor
was equilibrium lost for a single instant. Each one occupied always his proper
place. Different spheres remained independent from one another, without
anyone having to demand it or even comment on it. Thus Sanguily and
others constructed a world in which the enslaved man could violate enough
prescriptions of colonial society to threaten the colonial order, but not enough
to overturn traditional norms of social interaction. Such representations were
predicated, in part, on a division between political and social spheres. In the
political sphere the slave was allowed enough agency to become a submissive
insurgent. But in daily social contact between those identied as white and
those identied as black, the norms of racial etiquette were always maintained. Thus the regime of equality that Sanguily said was produced in the
elds of the insurrection could coexist with the most profound order. They
could coexist without contradiction because that regime of equality was
seen as something the black slave neither demanded nor constructed for himself. Equality was cast as a gift of the white leadership, and the black slave,
knowing it was a gift, enjoyed it respectfully and obediently. The transgression
of boundaries that allowed him to challenge colonialism and slavery was, in
these writings, less a transgression than an extension of his subservience to a
white insurgent master. And his heroism was one grounded in gratitude and
unrelated to black political desire.
In fact, the black insurgents desirability within the national project was
predicated on the erasure of any hint of his own desire. Thus the black insurgent in the prose of independence appeared to lack not only political will but
also any trace of sexual desire. Indeed, the absence of sexuality was essential to
the portrayal of his political passivity and deference. Spanish representations
of dangerous black insurgents often included allusions to black men seducing
white women, so gures such as Guillermo Moncada and Rustn, both black
ofcers in the Ten Years War, were discredited with stories about deled white
womanhood. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, however, pro-independence
writers explicitly countered such images, painting a black insurgent incapable
of posing any sexual threat. Sanguily wrote: [N]ever did the black man [el
negro] even dream of taking possession of the white woman [la blanca]; and
there [in the war] living in the midst of wilderness, never did we hear of any
crime of rape, or of any attempt against the woman, forsaken in the loneliness
of the mountains. Even with clear opportunity, Sanguily suggested, the
black insurgent showed no inclination to subvert racial and gender hierarchies. Nowhere was white recognition of the absence of that desire more
visible than in Jos Marts 1894 description of Salvador Cisneros Betancourt,
the aging insurgent-aristocrat who during the Ten Years War decided to bury

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his white daughter in the same grave as his own black male slave. In this
moment, which Mart exalts as emblematic of the revolution, unity between
black and white, between slave and master, was given literal and permanent
form in the union of the bodies of a white woman and a black man. Yet that
union posed no threatnot only because it occurred in death, but also because it represented not black will but white benevolence and generosity.
In the years before the nal war, writers, ofcers, and readers looked back
on the armed slave of the 1870s and conferred on him the traits of loyalty and
submissiveness to the cause of Cuba Libre. It was impossible for any of these
gures to betray the cause of Cuba, to threaten white women, to harbor hatred
for their former white masters, or to support the idea of a black nation.
Compare this image with that prevalent in the 1870s and early 1880s of the
black insurgent leader Guillermo Moncada. One correspondent from the
United States recounted some of the rumors that prevailed about the black
general in the 1870s: he was a man . . . as ferocious in disposition as terrible in
aspect, who was said to kill every white man who fell into his hands and to
keep women (white and otherwise) in harems. Yet by 1888 a popular
compilation of insurgents biographies described the general as good and
trustworthy and as proof of what strong allies men of color could be if
nurtured and educated only in virtues from an early age. By the early
1890s the black insurgent had been recongured: the terrible Guillermn had
given way to the loyal Legn and the innocent Pap Ramn.
But though the gure of the armed slave was rendered safe in the prose of
insurgency, that gure was also made central to the very process of nation
making. He appears as the central gure in poems such as 1868 by Enrique
Hernndez Miyares, in which the protagonist, a heroic and self-sacricing
black soldier on horseback, is dened as the very essence of the rebel effort,
or in stories such as Fidel Cspedes, in which the armed slave hero sacrices his life to save the lives of fellow Cubans. And in numerous political
essays published by white and nonwhite authors, the arming and liberating of
slaves is identied as a principal achievement of the independence movement,
which is distinguished by its commitment to antislavery and, in many cases,
antiracism.
Clearly, then, the mobilization of slaves proceeded on two fronts. In armed
rebellion against Spain, slaves actively engaged themselves, answering and in
many ways surpassing the cautious call to arms issued by creole patriots. But
their very presence called into being a whole set of arguments about the racial
character of rebellion and the racial character of the nation that the rebellion
sought to found. Thus alongside the arming of slaves for war came a mobilization of a different sort: the invocation of the gure of the armed slave in a new

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prose of independence, a new set of writings that made the armed slave welcome and central in the national project. Though both the military and the
discursive mobilization of slaves may have been at times tactical and calculated, once the mobilization had begun slaves and former slaves could call on
their participation in the military to make bold claims for political rights in the
postemancipation republic erected at the end of the century.
Notes
1. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 17761848 (London,
1988), 3.
2. For a discussion of the regional and class dimensions of the leadership of the rebel
movement, see Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 18681898
(Chapel Hill, 1999), 1723, 5458.
3. Maniesto de la Junta Revolucionaria, October 10, 1868, in Hortensia Pichardo, ed., Documentos para la historia de Cuba (Havana, 1968), 1:35862. See also
Cepero Bonilla, Azcar y abolicin, in Escritos Historicas (Havana, 1989), 9295.
4. Maniesto de la Junta Revolucionaria, 1:361; La situacin de Cuba, Boletn
de la Revolucin, December 16, 1868, in Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), Manuscritos
(hereafter BNM), MSS/20283/1 (10).
5. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, Comunicacin diplomtica encargando explorar la
opinin norteamericana sobre la anexin, January 3, 1869, in Cspedes, Escritos (Havana, 1982), 1:14246.
6. Ibid.
7. Captain General Lersundi, October 24, 1868, in Archivo Histrico Nacional,
Spain (hereafter AHN), Secin Ultramar (hereafter SU), leg. 4933, 1a parte, book 1, doc.
no. 55.
8. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, October 17, 1868, in Criminal contra Don Manuel
Villa, in Archivo Nacional de Cuba (hereafter ANC), Fordo Comisin Militar (hereafter
CM), leg. 125, exp. 6, 13637.
9. Ordn del da, Bayamo, October 29, 1868, in Cspedes, Escritos, 1:117.
10. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, Bando de 12 de Noviembre de 1868, in Justo
Zaragoza, Las insurrecciones en Cuba (Madrid, 187273), 2:732. See also Cepero Bonilla, Azcar y abolicin, 94.
11. Informe referente a que sera injusto jar cuota de contribucin . . . a las ncas
rsticas del Departamento Oriental, in ANC, Fondo Asuntos Polticas (hereafter AP),
leg. 59, exp. 7.
12. Diligencias formadas para averiguar si es cierto que una partida de insurrectos se
llevaron junto con los esclavos de la Hacienda San Fernando del Dr. Fernando Pons el
negro emancipado nombrado Martn, in ANC, AP, leg. 57, exp. 18; petition of E. G.
Schmidt in U.S. National Archives, Record Group 76, Entry 341, U.S. and Spanish
Claims Commission, Claim no. 81. Though historians and rebels often describe these
assaults on farms as the liberation of slave forces, it is very important to note that
insurgents sometimes freed or took only partial slave forces, and sometimes only the men.

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In the case of Santsima Trinidad de Giro, rebels took men, women, and children alike,
but in many other instances women and children were left behind on the estates. See, e.g.,
Expediente en averiguacin de los servicios prestados por el negro esclavo Zacaras
Priol, ANC, AP, leg. 62, exp. 34.
13. Comandante Andrs Brisuelos to Gen. Julio Grave de Peralta, December 3, 1868,
in AHN, SU, leg. 5837. For other examples of individual slaves freely offering their
services to the rebellion, see the documents relating to captured insurgents in AHN, SU,
leg. 4457.
14. Sumaria instruida contra el negro esclavo Jos Manuel por el delito de insurreccin, February 1869, in ANC, AP, leg. 58, exp. 44. For an example of a rebel handbill
directed at slaves, see the proclamation in AHN, SU, leg. 4933, 2a parte, book 4, doc. no.
96. For a discussion of the ways in which slaves who remained on plantations used the
uncertainty created by war to exercise more autonomy and agency, see Rebecca Scott,
Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 18601899 (Princeton,
1985), ch. 2.
15. For slaves taken from farms by insurgents and made to do menial work in support
of the rebellion, see the documents relating to captured insurgents in AHN, SU, legs.
4439, 4457, 5837, 5844. Many of these slaves went on to serve the Spanish army in
similar roles. See the individual les in ANC, AP, legs. 6170.
16. On Francisco Vicente Aguilera, see Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez, La Guerra de los
Diez Aos (Havana, 195052), 1:108n. On Jos Manuel, see ANC, AP, leg. 58, exp. 44.
On Magn, see AHN, SU, leg. 4439.
17. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, Decreto, December 27, 1868, in Pichardo, Documentos para la historia de Cuba, 1:37073.
18. Cspedes, Comunicacin diplomtica.
19. Numbers of slave participants were not recorded or preserved systematically.
There would have been signicant variation by region and period over the course of the
ten years of war. There is no single roster of soldiers for the rebel army in this war.
20. Constitucin de Guimaro, in Pichardo, Documentos para la historia de Cuba,
1:37679.
21. Quoted in Cepero Bonilla, Azcar y abolicin, 107. Emphasis mine.
22. Reglamento de libertos, in Pichardo, Documentos para la historia de Cuba,
1:38082.
23. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, December 25, 1870, in Pichardo, Documentos para
la historia de Cuba, 1:388.
24. Cspedes, Comunicacin diplomtica.
25. See especially Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in
Jamaica and Britain, 18321938 (Baltimore, 1992), ch. 2; Julie Saville, The Work of
Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina (Cambridge, UK, 1994).
26. Donato Mrmol and Mximo Gmez, Alocucin a los hacendados de Cuba,
December 31, 1868, reprinted in Emilio Bacard y Moreau, Crnicas de Santiago de
Cuba (Madrid, 1973), 4:7981. Many of the slaves taken from coffee and sugar farms
were later captured by or presented themselves to Spanish authorities. See their case les,
scattered throughout ANC, AP, legs. 6170.
27. Colonel Juan M. Cancino to Campamento provisional de Palmas Altas, December

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327

30, 1868, in AHN, SU, leg. 4457; Esclavos embargados, Bayamo, 1874, in ANC, BE,
leg. 200, exp. 6.
28. Expediente instruido sobre la averiguacin y conducta del negro esclavo agregado a este Batalln, Juan de la Cruz (a) Bolvar, in ANC, Fondo Bienes Embargados
(hereafter BE), AP, leg. 62, exp. 32.
29. See his testimony in ANC, AP, leg. 62, exp. 34.
30. The incorporation of slaves into rebel forces was even referred to as forced
recruitment. See Francisco de Arredondo y Miranda, Recuerdos de las guerras de Cuba
(Havana, 1962), 97. For testimony given by slaves other than Priol regarding their forced
extraction by insurgents, see ANC, CM, leg. 129, exp.27, and the following les in ANC,
AP: 62/23, 62/32, 62/36, 62/7779. For testimony of free people making similar claims
about their forced induction into rebel forces, see the following les in ANC, CM: 125/6,
126/1, 126/13, 126/17, 126/30, 127/7, 127/17, 129/12, 129/27, 129/30.
31. See his testimony in ANC, CM, leg. 129, exp. 27.
32. See, e.g., the les on consejos de guerra during the nal years of the war in ANC,
Fondo Donativos y Remisiones, 463/18, 469/15, 577/28, 577/51.
33. See, e.g., Criminal contra D. Emilio Rivera, et al. in ANC, CM, leg. 129, exp. 27;
Gen. P. Rebustillo to [name crossed out], Los Cocos [Santiago], July 28, 1869, and Com.
Jos Ruiz to Cor. Jos C. Snchez, Camp San Nicols, March 30, 1870, both in AHN, SU,
leg. 4439.
34. Diario de Operaciones, Regimiento de la Habana No. 6 de Infantera, 1er Batalln, in Servicio Histrico Militar, Seccin Ultramar, Coleccin Microlmada Cuba,
reel 1, leg. 5.
35. See Expediente del moreno Andrs Aguilera, in ANC, AP, leg. 62, exp. 19. For
other cases of slaves requesting their freedom for having served Spain, see the petitions in
ANC, AP, legs. 6170.
36. Captain Gen. Caballero de Rodas to Min. de Ultramar, May 16, 1870, in AHN,
SU, leg. 4933, 2nd part, book 5, doc. no. 99. Emphasis in original. The term mamb was a
common name for the insurgents. Some have dened it as literally the offspring of a
monkey and a vulture, others as the Indian term for rebels against the rst Spanish
conquerors. Though the term may have originated as a pejorative label for the rebels,
sources agree that insurgents came to use the name proudly to refer to themselves. See
esp. Miguel Barnet, Biografa de un cimarrn (Havana, 1986), 169; Antonio Rosal y
Vsquez, En la manigua: Diario de mi cantiverio (Madrid, 1876), 248; Fernando Ortiz,
Un afrocubanismo: El vocablo mamb, in Etna y sociedad (Havana, 1993), 1023.
37. For individual cases of slaves requesting their freedom for having served Spain,
see the petitions in ANC, AP, legs. 6170.
38. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, Decreto, December 28, 1868, in Pichardo, Documentos para la historia de Cuba, 1:37073.
39. Ramn Roa, quoted in Pichardo, Documentos para la historia de Cuba, 31819.
40. 10 de Octubre, La Revolucin (New York), October 13, 1869, clipping in
AHN, SU, leg. 4933, 2a parte, book 4, doc. no. 88.
41. See Dubois, Reidy, and Morgan and OShaughnessy in this volume.
42. AHN, SU, leg. 4935, 1a parte, book 11, doc. no. 11. For more on the Puerto
Prncipe crisis, see Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, ch. 2.

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43. Carlos Manuel de Cspedes, Comunicacin diplomtica and Comunicacin

sobre el estado crtico de la revolucin, both in Cspedes, Escritos, 1:144, 147.
44. Martnez Campos letter, February 18, 1878, AHN, SU, leg. 4936, 2a parte, book
17, doc. no. 202.
45. Francisco Ibaez, Junta Central Protectora de Libertos, to Gobernador General,
September 22, 1874, AHN, SU, leg. 4882, tomo 3, exp. 49.
46. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba, 115; Carlos M. Trelles y Govin, Biblioteca
histrica cubana (Matanzas, 192226), 3:553; Convenio del Zanjn, in Pichardo,
Documentos para la historia de Cuba, 1:4034.
47. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Cuba/Espaa, Espaa/Cuba (Barcelona, 1995), 255.
48. George Vecsey, Cuba Wins; Therefore, Cuba Wins, Washington Post, August 4,
1991, sec. 8, p. 2. Stories about Genaro Lucum and Irene were told to me by my mother,
who was among the children to whom they told their stories.
49. Partha Chaterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), 76.
50. Biblilo [pseud.], El negro Ramn y la muerte de Cspedes (San Antonio de los
Baos, 1894), 2022; Fernando Figueredo Socorrs, La toma de Bayamo (San Antonio
de los Baos, 1893), 3031; Socorrs, Revolucin de Yara, 18681878, Conferencias
(1902; reprint, Miami, 1990), 43n. All refute the claim of the slaves betrayal of Cspedes.
The latter, though published in 1902, is composed of lectures given by Figueredo in the
1880s and was originally scheduled for publication in 1894.
51. For additional examples and discussion, see Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, ch. 5.
52. The clipping appears in ANC, DR, leg. 287, exp. 28. The article, and another with
the same title about a black insurgent named Joaqun Ja, were published in La Igualdad
on September 21, 1892, and October 1, 1892, respectively, and reprinted later in Ramn
Roa, Con la pluma y el machete (Havana, 1950), 1:24851. Roa also published a short
article about the patriotic services of a black woman, Rosa la Bayamesa, in the same
newspaper in 1892. The article was reprinted as a chapter titled Rosa la Bayamesa in
his Calzado y montado in Con la pluma y el machete, 1:18992. Roa was also the author
of a vivid description of insurgent matiabosthe African maroon communities that lent
services to the Cuban leaders of 1868. Although that description, in which the black
insurgent is painted as foreign and dangerous, was written in the 1890s as part of the
same collection as the portrait of Rosa la Bayamesa, it did not appear until the publication of his collected works in 1950.
53. Note that Roas description of Legn rst appeared in the black newspaper La
Igualdad, suggesting that the audience for these writings was made up of not only white
Cubans whose fears they sought to allay but also black Cubans whose support was also
courted by the colonial state and the autonomist party. Legns story demonstrates that
point particularly well, for it appeared in numerous publications accessible to white and
nonwhite audiences. For example, Manuel de la Cruz told Legns story in his Episodios
de la revolucin cubana (Havana, 1911) and Serafn Snchez, veteran of the Ten Years
War and the Guerra Chiquita, authored a short biography of Legn in his book Heroes
humildes y poetas de la guerra, published in New York in 1894. Snchezs account
chronicled the same transformation, explicitly identifying Legn as African-born. Thus
he was transformed from a black African slave (not merely a black slave) to a Cuban

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329

patriot. See Cruz, Episodios de la revolucin cubana, 12627; and Serafn Snchez,
Heroes humildes y los poetas de la guerra (Havana, 1981), 4150.
54. Manuel Sanguily, Negros y blancos, Hojas Literarias, January 31, 1894, reprinted in Manuel Sanguily, Obras de Manuel Sanguily (Havana, 1925), vol. 8, bk. 2,
13738.
55. Sanguily, Obras, vol. 8, bk. 2, 137.
56. Although the introduction and the maintenance of the institution of slavery on the
island are attributed to the Spanish, individual slaveowners are often portrayed as benevolent, pro-independence Cubans.
57. Sanguily, Negros y blancos.
58. Jos Mart, Los cubanos de Jamaica, in Mart, Obras completas (Havana,
1946), 1:49495.
59. James OKelly, The Mambi-Land, or Adventures of a Herald Correspondent in
Cuba (Philadelphia, 1874), 124. See also Manuel Suarezs letter of October 1, 1879, in
Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Documentos para servir a la historia de la Guerra Chiquita
(Havana, 194950), 2:252.
60. Album de El Criollo (Havana, 1888), 200204.
61. In this process of reconguration, the most prominent black insurgents in the war
are relatively absent from the public prose of independence. Few black insurgents appear
in Marts biographical portraits of independence leaders, and he seems to have published
no biographical sketches of men such as Quintn Bandera or Guillermo Moncada. His
prole of Antonio Maceo is interesting precisely because Maceo remains surpisingly
absent. Purportedly a prole of Maceo, it devotes signicantly more attention to Maceos
mother. Maceo appears in the beginning of the portrait as an intelligent and industrious
farmer waiting for orders from others before taking part in a revolution. See Antonio
Maceo,Mariana Grajales, and La Madre de los Maceo, which were all published in
Patria in 1893 and 1894 and reprinted in Mart, Obras completas, 1:58689, 61718.
62. Enrique Hernndez Miyares, 1868, in Obras completas (Havana, 191516),
1:33; Cruz, Episodios de la revolucion cubana, 2931. See also the discussion of essays
by Jos Mart, Manuel Sanguily, Juan Gualberto Gomez, and Rafael Serra in Ferrer,
Insurgent Cuba, ch. 5.

The Arming of Slaves in Comparative Perspective

christopher leslie brown

Slaveholders sometimes entrusted slaves with the use of deadly force.

But the arming of slaves, as a practice, has yet to become the subject of sustained comparative analysis. The neglect follows, in part, from the difculty of
the task. Effective comparisons across space and time require command of a
vast number of customs, institutions, and specic historical settings. It is
perhaps the variety of times and places where slave soldiers have appeared,
the historian Douglas H. Johnson has written, which inhibit a clear focus on
the continuity and character of the institution itself. The practice of arming
slaves, moreover, varied widely enough to resist broad assessments of its character, to discourage hasty generalizations about its nature and tendencies.
Perhaps it has seemed that such assessments could yield only abstracted ideal
typesthe armed slave and the arming of slavestoo remote from the
specic experiences of masters and bondsmen and too imprecise to have value
for historical analysis. For these reasons, few investigators have wished to do
more than allude in passing to how specic practices differed from the arming
of slaves elsewhere. Indeed, most have not gone even this far, electing instead
to present the particular instances in their particularity and isolate them from
wider historical contexts. Ambitious attempts at sustained comparisons, as a
consequence, have been exceptionally rare.
The juxtaposition in this book of thirteen very different histories, however,

330

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331

should indicate the possibilities that careful comparisons across time and space
may present. The particular histories begin to look less peculiar. The divergent traditions expose problems for explanation. An awareness of the wider
contexts facilitates more precise questions about the individual cases. Plantation slavery has long attracted comparative research that links regions, hemispheres, oceans, and continents. The comparative history of abolition, emancipation, and post-emancipation societies has received increasing attention,
too. The arming of slaves, as a subject of study, stands to benet from similar
experiments in cross-cultural analysis. For, despite their signicant differences,
the individual cases present certain common features that make comparison
useful: they each treat enlistment in the context of enslavement, and they each
consider captivity as the basis for recruitment.
The chapters of this book take up a complex and varied subject. The number
of cases under consideration could easily be extended to include almost every
known slave society. It would require a second volume of comparable length to
treat each of the major instances of slave arming in respectable detail. In
ancient Rome, as in ancient Greece, for example, political authorities recruited
slaves in moments of crisis, particularly in the Punic Wars and during the last
decades of the republic. When Hannibal threatened Rome in the third century
b.c., Livy later recorded, the Romans responded by purchasing with public
funds the freedom of eight thousand slaves willing to serve in exchange for
liberty. At roughly the same time, during the Han Dynasty (206 b.c.a.d. 25),
nobles employed armed slaves as a way to fortify their authority. The Chinese
gentry now and again directed their bondsmen to terrorize commoners, murder enemies, and confront state ofcials. In a similar way, prominent Romans
of the late Republic, the historian Keith Bradley has written, commonly used
their gladiators as personal security guards. In medieval Korea, as in the
Roman republic, ofcials liberated slaves en masse to defend the state against
attack from Mongol raiders in the mid-thirteenth century, Japanese threats in
the late sixteenth century, and, nally, Manchu invaders in the seventeenth
century. These crises encouraged the establishment of permanent regiments in
which slaves and commoners served side by side, a practice that contributed to
the gradual decline of slavery in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Korea.
Slaves constituted approximately a third of the ghting force in sixteenthcentury Russia, primarily as cavalry in their owners service. Muscovite combat slaves, the historian Richard Hellie has written, were as responsible as
free men for the victories and losses of early modern Russian arms. By the late
seventeenth century, slave soldiers had become essential infantrymen in the
war-making power of the Russian state.
The arming of slaves in western Africa, which John Thornton surveys here,

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Christopher Leslie Brown

persisted long after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Slave soldiers
lled the ranks in Dahomey and in the Yoruba states prominent in the rst half
of the nineteenth century in the regions that Europeans had known as the
Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Slave armies, sometimes organized as
private militias, policed the enslaved agricultural workers who labored near
the Atlantic coast to produce palm oil for European markets. The European
governments that partitioned Africa at the end of the nineteenth century
would rely, in turn, on African soldiers of slave origin in order to establish the
political authority of colonial governments. In several instances they liberated,
conscripted, or purchased bondsmen in order to seize control from local elites.
The Tirailleurs Senegalais, who enabled French conquest of the western Sudan
in the late nineteenth century and who subsequently defended France itself
during World War I and World War II, represent only the most famous example of the several colonial armies founded through the enlistment of slaves.
The Portuguese use of Chikunda slaves as instruments of state authority in
colonial Mozambique, as assessed here by Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson, represents just one instance of a common practice among European colonizers in Africa.
The mamluk
system, described in Reuven Amitais chapter, had institutional legacies across the Muslim world. The ghulams (Turkish military slaves)
who served the Delhi sultanate during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
arrived from the same regions that supplied bondsmen for the mamluks.

In the early seventeenth century the sultans of Acheh in Muslim Indonesia
were served by 500 royal slaves born abroad and trained in warfare in their
youth, Geoffrey Parker reports, citing the work of Anthony Reid. In the
modern era, slave warriors participated in the raids for slaves that produced
laborers for the Sulu sultanate in the present-day Philippines. The Ottoman
Empire that took shape in the eastern Mediterranean during the fourteenth
century owed its military power to the janissaries, a professional army of slave
soldiers established rst through wars of expansion and subsequently through
levies on dependent Christian villages in the Balkans. This was the most sophisticated system of military slavery to emerge in the Muslim world in the late
medieval and early modern periods. If the gradual inclusion of free men in the
jannisary corps during the seventeenth and eighteenth century prepared the
way for the formal demise of the system in 1826, slaves continued to serve in
the middle and upper ranks of the Ottoman army until the nal collapse of the
empire in 1918. The institution of military slavery persisted in the region
throughout the nineteenth century, especially once invigorated and intensied
by the Ottoman general Mehmed Ali Pasha, who raided and then conquered
the Sudan to create a modern army manned by slave soldiers, the jihadiya. The

The Arming of Slaves

333

result was what Douglas H. Johnson has characterized as the most extreme
and important example of military slavery in modern African history.
The essays published in this book, therefore, represent case studies of a
global phenomenon, instances of a set of practices more or less characteristic
of numerous societies where slaveholding became common. Considered together, they make apparent the variety of issues the subject presents and the
range of questions that a comparative study of the arming of slaves could
protably address. There are, rst, the social and political facts regarding the
arming of slaves: the occasions that put slaves in arms, the mode of recruitment and enlistment, the quality of their preparation for battle, the absolute
and relative numbers involved, and the responsibilities assigned to slave soldiers. A second topic relates to the experiences of slave soldiers, the ways
military service shaped the ways they regarded their circumstances, opportunities, and themselves, as well as the ways those slave soldiers related to the
state, the political elite, free peoples, and other slaves. The chapters also document transformations in slavery: the impact of slave soldiers on slave societies,
the civil status of slave soldiers in the aftermath of war, the relation between
military service and manumission (as well as other forms of social incorporation), the emergence of elite slaves, and the weakening or strengthening of
slave systems through the deployment of slave soldiers. In these three ways,
the arming of slaves becomes an essential aspect of the history of slavery itself.
And yet, at the same time, the arming of slaves emerges as well as a vital topic,
even more broadly, in the history of warfare and the acquisition and mobilization of political power.

Statecraft and Recruitment

The arming of slaves took a wide variety of forms, from the hasty provision of weapons to specialized training for battle. And it could occur more or
less routinely, from the arming of slaves in moments of crisis to the systematic employment of slave soldiers in permanent regiments. Initiated in each
instance by political or military elites, the arming of slaves must be distinguished analytically from the many moments when slaves armed themselves to
achieve retribution, liberation, or independence. In this way, the subject differs
from the history of slave resistance. The practice, in most instances, represented instead an effort among certain elites to turn their inuence over bondsmen to political advantage. If plantation slavery provided landholders with a
way to accumulate wealth, the arming of slaves provided political elites (or
those hoping to become political elites) with a way to accumulate power. To
this extent, the arming of slaves represented to slaveholders an instrument of

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statecraft. At the same time, the use of slaves in warfare could, in some instances, award political standing and political importance to those who had
been armed, vesting the slave (or former slave) with the range of options
usually available to military elites hoping to establish for themselves independence, autonomy, and power. If the arming of slaves rarely proved dangerous
to political elites in the short term, in the long run the practice could (and often
did) complicate questions of power and powerlessness among both the enslaved and the free, by placing the dependent in a position of power and, in
turn, the powerful in a state of dependence.
The ambitious armed slaves in order to advance every conceivable agenda,
as the chapters, taken together, make clear. Governments sometimes found the
arming of slaves useful when extending their spheres of authority. Slaves assisted the expansion of empires. The Spartans of classical Greece employed the
subject Helots extensively when ghting distant campaigns. The expansion of
Islam owed much to the superior military capacity of mamluk
slaves in service
to the Islamic states in the Middle East. Slaves in arms had an important role in
European expansion in the Americas, particularly to the Spanish, for whom
enslaved Africans provided some of the muscle for the Spanish conquest of the
Indies in the sixteenth century. During the era of the Haitian Revolution,
European combatants enlisted enslaved men for expeditions designed to capitalize on the troubles in Saint Domingue. Jacobin agents hoping to export the
French Revolution to the West Indies liberated slaves in Guadeloupe, Laurent
Dubois explains, in order to launch a campaign of conquest in the Eastern
Caribbean. The British established their well-known West India Regiments
with the aim of annexing the plantation colonies possessed by France and the
Netherlands. In each of these instances, the arming of slaves allowed ofcials
to undertake military campaigns that would have been inconceivable without
the mobilization of slave labor.
Governments also enlisted slaves to discourage or suppress political opposition. In much of Africa and the Islamic Middle East, rulers armed slaves (or,
rather, acquired slaves in order to arm them) so that they could centralize
power and discourage political resistance. The practice became a favored option as well for elites in the Americas facing the dissolution of their authority.
British commanders resorted to this expedient during the American Revolution in the hopes of retaining the thirteen colonies. Royalist agents in early
nineteenth-century Venezuela and Peru liberated enslaved men and women to
ght against colonial rebels to preserve those settlements for the Crown. The
United States government armed tens of thousands of enslaved men to preserve the federal union during the American Civil War. When imperial governments proved incapable of protecting their overseas colonies from attack

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by European rivals, the colonists sometimes turned to their slaves in selfdefense. Morgan and OShaughnessy show this to have been an especially
common practice in the Caribbean, where the ratio of blacks to whites was
greatly unbalanced and where European troops often proved ineffective
in sustained ghting on the ground. Colonists of every nationality in the
seventeenth-century Caribbean armed slaves reluctantly but routinely to defend their nascent settlements. Thereafter, trusted enslaved men served regularly in the island militias. By the end of the eighteenth century, British and
French planters counted on enslaved men for assistance in preserving control
of their estates, even as insurrections by former slaves lay the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean to waste. Sustaining political authority in the Americas
often meant entrusting slaves with the use of force, notwithstanding the anticipated risks.
Enslaved men sometimes served as the defenders of the social order. In
several societies outside of the Americas, the use of slaves as internal police became systematic. Enslaved Scythian archers kept the peace in classical
Athens. Mamluks
provided security for the caliphs and other rulers in the
Islamic Middle East. The slave army established in the early eighteenth century, the Abid Al Bukhari, provided the infrastructure for the highly centralized Moroccan state. In East Africa, the elite Chikunda slaves of Portuguese proprietors monitored the indigenous peasant proprietors on behalf
of their overlords. In most of these instances, control over the social order
extended to control over the economic order. Mamluks
and Chikunda not
only policed the free population. They used their monopoly over the legitimate
use of force to control economic resources within the regimes. They regulated
commerce, collected taxes, and seized booty for their owners and themselves.
The use of military power to bolster economic power gures in countless
instances where slave soldiers came to prominence. The nobility of Muscovy
chose to deploy slaves in combat roles because, in part, the extra hands could
assist the transport of valuable goods from the eld of battle. The royal
slaves who served as military commanders in the Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria in the early twentieth century also supervised tax collection and
the management of state plantations.
Armed slaves gured in campaigns of political resistance, too. For provincial
elites and for the leaders of states at the peripheries of far-ung empires, the
arming of slaves could help prevent absorption and preserve local autonomy.
Ofcials in Minas Gerais, Hendrik Kraay indicates, discouraged the arming of
slaves in the Brazilian hinterland because they feared that the practice would
make slaveholders there even more difcult to govern. Arab traders operating
in the Nile River basin under European direction kept private armies of slave

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soldiers to facilitate raids for ivory, cattle, and African captives in the late
nineteenth century. Those soldiers, subsequently, became important in the
Arab traders ultimately unsuccessful resistance to colonial rule in the southern
Sudan. The arming of slaves in the Americas, as in Africa, sometimes gured
signicantly in campaigns for political independence. This was especially the
case in Spanish America, where wars of liberation became deeply entwined
with and heavily dependent on the mobilization of the enslaved population.
The victories of San Martn in Argentina and Bolvar in Venezuela are incomprehensible, as Peter Blanchard makes clear, without reference to the contributions made by slave soldiers. In Cuba, too, as Ada Ferrer details, resistance to colonial rule in 1868 began with the liberation of certain slaves for
battle. Indeed, the arming of slaves in some instances enabled the pursuit of
political ambitions that otherwise would have been impossible to realize. Neither the Portuguese in seventeenth-century Angola nor the Republicans of
early nineteenth-century Brazil, for example, could have achieved political
power without rst enlisting enslaved men and women in their cause.
In institutional terms, the arming of slaves expressed itself in one of two
waysmilitary slavery (which prevailed in much of Africa and the Middle
East) and the less sophisticated schemes for the arming of slaves particularly
common to the Americas. The contrasts are striking. Muslim and African
rulers depended on armed slaves because, in societies where kinship often
shaped political allegiance, slaves represented a particularly dependable source
of loyal service. Slave soldiers, by denition, possessed no family ties and, as
professional warriors, rarely had a role in economic production. Political elites
acquired these involuntary soldiers in systematic fashion, through conquest,
long-distance slave trades, or levies on subject peoples. Often they displayed a
preference for those they regarded as martial races, for nomadic peoples
who depended on their military prowess for survival and who lived in communities vulnerable to exploitation by more powerful statesalthough, in some
crucial instances, slave armies were formed from the indigenous population.
Recruiters sought adolescent boys especially, if not exclusively, those young
enough to be retrained in loyalty to a new patron. Their preparation for service
usually began with ceremonies of ritual death and rebirth that left them dependent on their new patrons for their status within society. Authorities typically
housed the new slave soldiers in encampments distant from the rest of the slave
and free population. There they received a specialized education in the art of
war and developed, in the process, a corporate identity rooted in their position
as elite bondsmen of the ruler. These military slaves, frequently numbering in
the thousands, were often regarded as members of the royal household. In this
way, military slaves became a highly vulnerable elite, able to possess and

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exercise substantial political authority because of their special relationship

with the powerful, and yet, as slaves, unable to reproduce their social position
through their heirs. Their ranks instead were sustained through continual
imports of newly enslaved boys from vulnerable populations.
In the Americas, the arming of slaves typically took on a very different
dynamic. Elites enlisted slaves less to acquire loyal subjects than to address
shortages of manpower. Recruitment took place, as a consequence, in a more
haphazard fashion, as a response to the sudden perception of a need, as a
reaction in moments of insecurity. Europeans in the Americas did not purchase
slaves with the intention of deploying them in military service. Instead, slaveholders had to reassign agricultural and domestic workers to military roles, or
colonial authorities had to appropriate the enslaved workforce when faced
with the prospect of war. Sometimes, in the Americas, the initiative originated
with the enslaved themselves. Fugitives from slavery, as volunteers in search of
liberty or favor, offered their service in time of war, in some instances before
the combatants sought out their assistance. In these instances, the arming of
slaves functioned also as a consequence ofand further encouragement to
slave ight, particularly during the American Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Spanish American Wars of Independence. Because they were
enlisted and deployed in a hurry, armed slaves in the Americas rarely received
the sustained training characteristic of military slavery in the mamluk
kingdoms or the Ottoman Empire. Men, not boys, represented the ideal recruit.
And the new soldiers, as members of a much larger colonial or imperial army,
very rarely became a separate military and political elite as the mamluks
and
their descendants did in late medieval Egypt. If slaves that entered service in
the Americas could sometimes expect to obtain freedom in exchange for their
labor, only in rare instances did they escape the stigma associated with their
slave origins.
These broad institutional resemblances, of course, mask signicant and
substantial differences in practice. No two systems of military slavery were
exactly alike. They diverged from each other in a variety of ways, especially in
the numbers of men involved, the character of their preparation for warfare,
and the manner in which those bondsmen became slave soldiers. Investigators
will learn as much from the differences that distinguish the mamluks
of late
medieval Egypt from the jahidiya of the Turco-Egyptian Sudan or from the
warrior slaves of Segu in the Niger valley as they will from their similarities. A
single system of military slavery, moreover, could change radically over time.
The janissary corps of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century look very
different from the corps of the sixteenth century, since, in the interim, free men
(those without slave origins) had begun to occupy a major place in these

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regiments. Systems of military slavery were not static institutions. The same
holds true for the more haphazard practice of arming slaves in the Americas.
Traditions varied from region to region, sometimes from colony to colony, and
took different shapes over time. Caribbean practices departed from the conventions that developed in North America and departed again from the traditions that developed in Brazil. The age of revolutions led to unrivaled innovation and improvisation in the military roles allowed to enslaved men in the
Americas; it marked a sharp break from the past.
The opportunities for comparison, then, lie within specic traditions as well
as between them. The evolution and transfer of institutions, in particular, need
more careful scrutiny. The origins and inuence of the mamluk
phenomenon
in the Middle East and in South Asia have become reasonably well known
through the work of David Ayalon, Richard Pipes, and Andre Wink, among
many others. But its precise relation to military slavery elsewhere in the Muslim world, and beyond, remains obscure. It is not yet apparent, for example,
whether military slavery, which seems to have been universal in the Muslim
world, developed from a particular sequence of institutional inuences or,
instead, from more general tendencies peculiar to Muslim societies. The character of institutional development is even less clear for the history of Atlantic
slave systems. Like the more familiar plantation complex, which Philip Curtin
and other historians have traced from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, the
arming of slaves has an institutional history in the Americas. The practice
migrated across space and adapted to new needs over time. As Jane Landers
indicates, there was a pattern of inuence from military slavery in Muslim
Spain and during the Christian reconquista to the Spanish employment of
enslaved men in the Indies and the subsequent use of slaves as combatants
throughout the Caribbean. This institutional history remains difcult to relate
in detail, however, and, as a consequence, difcult to mark through its various
stages.
In one instance, as David Geggus shows in this book, the patterns of development are especially clear. The power of precedent, and the impulse to
imitate and adapt, became especially apparent during the Haitian Revolution,
as those long reluctant to arm slaves for battle hurried to recruit bondsmen
into service and thereby attain prominence in the colony. Free coloreds in the
Port au Prince region enlisted the Swissfugitive slaves from nearby sugar
estatesin order to assert their claim to political power. French radicals in the
colonial city responded by establishing their own corps of armed slaves, the
Compagnie des Africains, who launched raids against free colored strongholds on the Cul de Sac plain. In the midst of this crisis, slave owners, both
white and mixed-race, armed their own slaves to defend their estates. At the

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same time, the British government, beginning in 1793, began to systematically

enlist slavesthe Chausseursinto its ranks in order to restore the plantation economy. Similar dynamics took shape in the Eastern Caribbean during
the era of the Haitian Revolution and, during the ensuing decades, in South
America. The arming of slaves by one set of combatants could lead to the
arming of slaves by another, a tendency that further study perhaps would
reveal in other moments of warfare in the Caribbean basin or elsewhere in the
Americas.
In the present state of research, the facts about the arming of slaves may
be identied and compared but not as easily linked. The details pertaining to
recruitment and deployment become increasingly clear; the way that slave
soldiers assisted exercises in statecraft are apparent. But how a specic set of
practices in one place affected comparable institutions elsewhere remains, in
most instances, vague and obscure, though suggestive leads abound throughout the existing scholarship. The Spanish, for example, had a long and vexed
history with the Ottoman Empire, in part because of their contest for supremacy in the Mediterranean. As a consequence, the Spanish knew well the
importance of the janissaries to the defense of the Ottoman frontiers and to
the power of Ottoman rulers. That example of captives in the service of empire
seems to have inuenced the concepts and strategies attractive to Spanish
ofcials in colonial New Mexico during the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. They designated the Indian captives whom they assigned to police
the frontier outposts as genizaros, the Spanish word for janissaries.

Armed Slaves
As a form of labor, military service bears comparison with the other
labor regimes in which men of slave origins worked. In the rst place, this
form of labor was highly gendered. In its uneven demographic proportions the
practice represents the inverse of sexual slavery, for which women were acquired in equally disproportionate numbers. In the Americas, this meant,
among other consequences, that enslaved men possessed a route to manumission not open to enslaved women. In the more developed systems of military
slavery in the eastern Mediterranean, the imbalance reected a more general
pattern of segregation, which was often regarded in Muslim societies as of
crucial importance. In the Sudanese sultanate of Dar Fur, to give just one
example, male and female slaves entered the palace through separate doorways. Like other forms of laborlike task labor, like gang labor, like domestic servicethe arming of slaves produced a characteristic social dynamic.
The practice tended to elevate the dishonored. It awarded a measure of power

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to the otherwise dispossessed, creating a class of what the scholarly literature

has tended to classify as elite slaves, bondsmen vested with certain rights
and privileges typically reserved for the free. In Muslim states, in fact, slave
soldiers often enjoyed benets and privileges not available to the free as a
consequence of their service in the royal household. The mamluk
ruling elite of
medieval Egypt presents only the most familiar example. Sean Stilwell, writing
of the Kano emirate in the Sokoto caliphate during the late nineteenth century,
has emphasized that the advantages enjoyed by royal slaves not only included
access to wealth and power but included as well access to knowledge about the
workings of the state. If the soldier of slave origins, in theory, remained vulnerable to the whims of his patron, he also, in most instances, possessed special
value to the regime. The murder of a hamba rajaa Malay royal slave
was treated by law more severely than the murder of an ordinary slave or a
commoner.
Enslaved men did not acquire a similar elite status in the Americas through
military service; slave soldiers did not become administrators, governors, or
members of the political elite. Instead, in most instances, they escaped bondage itself; for those that survived, service in war typically led to or was preceded by a release from slavery. The prospect of social advancement meant, in
turn, that bearing arms could be experienced as an opportunity to display
courage and merit, even for those who, at rst, found themselves bearing arms
unwillingly. Where the arming of slaves became somewhat common, in the
Caribbean in particular, one result was the growth of free black communities,
which, generally, thought of themselves as distinct from and superior to those
that remained in slavery. In American slave societies where the arming of
slaves was less systematic, the more rigid denitions of what slaves could do
meant, in most instances, that enslaved men who went to war, because they
went to war, could no longer be slaves. In societies where military slavery was
common, by contrast, the arming of slaves contributed to wide varieties of
status within the enslaved population, as well as, in some instances, manumission through military service.
Military service not only affected the social position of the captive. It also
affected how those captives thought about each other and themselves. Often
alienated from the communities in which they had been born, then isolated
within corps dedicated to warfare and in some instances forced to reside in
remote camps or barracks, slave soldiers typically developed a pronounced
group identity that, at once, distinguished them from other enslaved men and
women as well as the community of the free. Recruiters and rulers often
encouraged this sense of distinctiveness because it reinforced the dependence
of soldiers on a patron or the state. Those elevated in this way tended to

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identify with and nd their interests in the needs of those in power, because the
state provided uniforms, salaries, rank, the means of subsistence, and opportunities for plunder. The mamluks
were not unusual in developing deep loyalty
to their former masters even after manumission. This identity as bondsmen
trusted with the use of force also developed its own dynamic, however, as
armed soldiers of slave origin dened for themselves distinctive rituals, customs, and languages through which they fostered a sense of brotherhood.
Among the Ottoman military elite, for example, slave origins became a point
of pride. The results, in some instances, were new ethnic identities that were
dened, in most instances, by the members shared history of captivity and
military service, even as the experience itself receded with each passing generation. Those interested in comparative history of slavery and post-emancipation
societies perhaps could learn a great deal by examining such groupsthe
Tirailleurs Senegalais, the Nubi of the Sudan, the Chikunda of Mozambique,
and the West India Regiments of the British Empire, to take just a few exampleswithin a single analytical framework. Despite their considerable
differences, the members of each group shared the experience of slavery, military service, and the construction of new corporate identities from the memory
of service in warfare.
The consequences of these identities-forged-through-battle for gender conventions and gender expectations within these communities would benet
from sustained investigation. An opportunity to bear arms, in some instances,
meant an opportunity for enslaved men to assert control over women, both
slave and free. A rebel leader during Russias civil war of the early seventeenth
century, The Time of Troubles, told the bondsmen who joined him that they
could take the daughters of estate owners as their wives. There is evidence
that the commanders of slave soldiers in West Africa, to take another set of
examples, sometimes secured the loyalty of their military slaves by guaranteeing them access to dependentswomen and childrenof their own. The
crystallization of a warrior identity, moreover, could affect gender relations
within particular communities. The Chikunda ethnicity, with its emphasis on
military prowess and spectacular feats of courage, produced substantial innovations in gender norms among the peoples that became Chikunda. Most
important, it encouraged a population that had been captured from predominantly matrilineal cultures to adopt patrilineal modes of kinship. That history
hints that much may be learned from pursuing in greater depth the legacies of
military service in the households of former slaves. Several of the chapters in
this book point out that newly freed soldiers purchased or petitioned for the
liberty of a spouse or a family. There are instances here, as well, in which the
widows of slave soldiers sought from the government the right to the property

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and the status of the deceased, as occurred, for example, in the aftermath of
the U.S. Civil War and the Spanish American wars of independence. But
more research is needed on the gendered meaning of liberty in communities
that recognized courage in warfare as the principal path to freedom or social
advancement.
A no less crucial set of relations concerns the interactions between soldiers
and the state they served. If the arming of slaves established communities that
owed their social standing to the patronage and protection of the political
elite, the arrangement, even with its benets, could place those same rulers in a
bind. The arming of slaves both enabled and encouraged additional claims on
the state for privileges and rightsrights to freedom, rights in property, rights
as citizens, and rights to recognition. The black auxiliaries of Carlos IV, Jane
Landers shows, continued to demand recognition of their service to the Crown
even after their exile from Santo Domingo. Joseph Reidy emphasizes that
freedmen and freedwomen after the U.S. Civil War treated their service as the
basis for claims for pensions, for land, and for education. A reluctance to
honor such requests could prove risky when the military depended heavily, if
not exclusively, on soldiers recruited from slavery. There are countless instances in which armed slaves mutinied when they felt their privileges vulnerable or their positions threatened. A British West Indian regiment in Dominica
revolted in 1802 when it looked to them as if the state planned to return them
to the sugar plantations. The Chikunda of Mozambique rebelled against their
Portuguese masters not long afterward, when the prazeiros tried to sell the
Chikunda into the Atlantic slave trade or force them into agricultural labor.
The Sudanese slave soldiers of Kasala turned on their Turco-Egyptian masters
in 1865 as their pay fell in arrears and their overlords failed to meet their
obligations as patrons and protectors. Those armed by the state could not be
disarmed by the state without risking a substantial threat to social and political stability. Slaveholders never exposed themselves to greater danger than
when they demoted, humiliated, or disregarded those who had won liberty or
rights through military service.
In much of West Africa and the Middle East, slave soldiers often mobilized
their considerable military might to sustain their power and inuence. Since
that power usually depended on the security of their patron or the preservation of the state, these slave elites often proved to be determined defenders of
the established order. The mamluks
took control of the sultanates of Egypt
and Syria in the thirteenth century when it looked as if new caliphs would
remove them from ofce and diminish their inuence. The Ceddo soldiers in
the Bambara state of Segu placed themselves in ofce in the late eighteenth
century when a succession crisis seemed to put their social position and access

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to power at risk. A rebellion by Muslim slaves in the military gured in the

collapse of the Oyo Empire in the early nineteenth century. Those sultans
who tried to defy their slaves, one historian of the Ottoman Empire has
written, soon found themselves deposed. In one memorable instance in the
Americas, an army forged in the crucible of slavery placed itself in power, as
Muslim slave soldiers had done several times before. Toussaints black Jacobins ruled revolutionary Saint Domingue on behalf of France until the government of the rst consul decided to return the liberated to slavery. Toussaints army responded to this threat by seizing control of the colony and
establishing Haitian independence. In this way, independent Haiti emerged as,
in some respects, an American variant on the mamluk
state.
Slave soldiers usually had every incentive to ght to the death. Armed slaves
captured in battle typically faced an unpleasant fate, since the victors, particularly in the Americas, rarely tried to return such soldiers to agricultural
labor or domestic service. Some veterans, such as the black loyalists that
served the British army during the American Revolution or the Tropas Auxiliaries that served Charles IV in Santo Domingo, faced exile and resettlement.
The less fortunate found themselves abandoned to the enemy. This was the
experience of black troops the British recruited in 1794 and 1795 in an unsuccessful bid to seize Saint Domingue. Others, such as the Afro-Brazilian defenders of Sabinada or the revolutionary army of Victor Hugues, were simply
massacred. In much of the Islamic world, overthrowing a ruler typically meant
disposing of the elite slaves who served him. At the outset of their conquest of
Egypt in the early sixteenth century, Ottoman conquerors systematically disposed of the mamluk
elite. The Ottomans honored private property and safeguarded cooperative civilians. The mamluks
they decapitated. These events
repeated themselves almost three centuries later, after the revival of mamluk

power during an era of Ottoman decline. When the Ottoman general Muhammad Ali took control of Egypt in the early nineteenth century, he decided that
his independence as a leader would depend on removing the mamluks
from
power. He slaughtered them in 1811 in order to replace one set of slave elites
with his own. Few events better illustrate the precarious position of even the
most privileged of bondsmen whose position depended entirely on their relationship to the state.
A research agenda that intends, then, to elucidate the position of the armed
slave has a variety of questions to consider. In addition to the work that slave
soldiers performed, in addition to the ways they were prepared for duty and deployed for battle, there were a constellation of relationships that affected what
being an armed slave meant. These relationships with the free, with the state,
and among each other helped decide the character of the military experience. If

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the history of slave arming is in part the history of slaves and statecraft, that
history must also be a study of the social and political life of the enlisted
bondsmen.

Transformations in Slavery
The arming of slaves often had lasting consequences for the institution
of slavery itself, as well as for the enslaved. It gured in the comprehensive
emancipations in the French Caribbean in the late eighteenth century and in the
United States of America in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as during the
wars of independence in republican Venezuela and Peru. In these cases, mobilizing manpower for public ends often meant liberating bondsmen from private ownership. Liberated soldiers often proved to be the most committed to
ensuring that these wartime exigencies became the basis for permanent changes
in law. Bondsmen in arms, particularly in the Americas, often became abolitionists by means of military service. In other instances, the arming of slaves
helped initiate a slow death for slavery, by allowing slaves liberty in exchange
for service, by eroding the property rights of slaveholders, by creating opportunities for escape among enslaved men and women, or by blurring the customary boundaries (such as race) that distinguished the enslaved from the free. This
pattern prevailed, for example, in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
British empire, where, inadvertently in the West Indies and deliberately in West
Africa, British demands for power and manpower compromised the position of
slaveholding elites. In either case, through rapid and radical change or
through slow erosion, when European authorities armed slaves, the typical
result was the erosion of slaveholders authority. It was this dynamic that
Orlando Patterson had in mind when he treated slaves in military service under
the more general rubric of patterns of manumission.
In other situations, however, the arming of slaves could produce the opposite effect. A demand for slave soldiers often encouraged the enslavement of
boys and men and promoted the trade in bondsmen. In the long run, European
governments helped cause an end to slavery in Africa in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century by drawing off slave labor into their colonial armies
and by refusing legal recognition to established forms of slavery. In the short
run, however, those same colonial powers encouraged local elites to take new
captives to replace those they lost to European regiments. As the historian Taj
Hargey has explained, to give just one example, the British government fostered fresh slave acquisition in the Sudan when it enlisted manumitted and
fugitive slaves into the army in the early twentieth century as owners sought
to replace those conscripted. The arming of slaves had an even more pro-

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found effect on slavery in the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Caucusus in
the medieval and early modern eras. Slave trades in those regions emerged
because of the demand for slave soldiers in North Africa and the Middle East.
Across the Islamic world, from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries,
Muslim rulers instituted or supported slave markets in order to attain a sufcient number of slaves for elite regiments. Linda S. Northrup has recently
argued that ensuring the steady supply of slaves represented a prime diplomatic imperative for a mamluk
ruler. If the Atlantic slave trade came into
being to meet the demand for plantation labor in the Americas, slave raiding
expanded in the Nile Valley during the nineteenth century to provide the
Turco-Egyptian state (and then its Sudanese competitors) with slave soldiers.
Feeding and sustaining these armies typically required the intensication of
agricultural production, and, sometimes as a consequence, the intensication
of agricultural slavery. This was true not only in the Sudan but in the warrior
states of West Africa as well. If the arming of slaves, then, sometimes contributed to the end of slavery in the Americas, elsewhere the practice encouraged
slave trading and caused it to ourish.
These differencesbetween military slavery in the Middle East and large
parts of Africa, and the occasional deployment of slaves for battle in the
Americasoften have drawn comment but rarely extended consideration.
Those most interested in the comparative questions have tended to focus on
the circumstances that made military slavery distinct and, by implication,
aberrant. It is sometimes assumed that military slavery developed only in
regions and eras subject to Muslim inuence. But military slavery, though
common in Islamic states, was not unique to them. It developed in several
societies beyond the reach of Islam, in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and in
early modern Russia and Korea, as well as briey in the Caribbean, where, at
the end of the eighteenth century, the British established a major, if short-lived,
system of military slavery. The British West India regiments shared many of
the features of military slavery elsewhere. The British government purchased
slaves through the Atlantic slave trade with the explicit purpose of arming
them for battle. They trained the captives for warfare and housed them in
encampments separate from the rest of the enslaved population. These slave
soldiers, in theory, served for life. They did not earn their freedom, at least
initially, in service to the Crown. The example of the British West India regiments, therefore, marks out the path not taken by European governments in
the Americas and elsewhere, though it should be noted that French ofcials in
Senegal and Dutch ofcials in Java both purchased hundreds of slaves from
trafckers in the early nineteenth century in order to deploy those bondsmen
in colonial armies. The familiar problem regarding the peculiar character

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Christopher Leslie Brown

of slavery in the Islamic world and much of Africa, then, might be turned on its
head. The interesting question has not been askedWhy did military slavery,
which otherwise prevailed in much of the slaveholding world, fail to develop
in the Americas?
Those in the Americas opposed to the arming of slaves frequently described
such a step as a dangerous expedient. That assessment conforms to the
expectations that prevail in contemporary historical scholarship, with its characteristic emphasis on the tendency of enslaved peoples to resist, and violently,
when opportunity offered. The commitment among slaves to an elevation in
status and ultimately to social and political standing need not be questioned.
In practice, however, the arming of slaves does not seem to have been distinctively dangerous, at least for those who did the arming. Mutinies and
desertions by slave soldiers punctuate the history of military slavery in the
Middle East and East Africa, from the Zanj rebellion of the ninth century to
the revolts within the Sudanese army in the nineteenth. It is not clear, however, that soldiers of slave origin turned on authorities more frequently than
did armies composed of free men; indeed, it would be valuable to have a
systematic analysis of particular instances. Most important, those who did
arm slaves rarely seem to have regretted the choice. The practice, in fact,
would seem to have had the apparently paradoxical effect, in some cases, of
discouraging violent resistance to slavery rather than promoting insurrection.
Often the arming of slaves connected bondsmen more closely to the established order instead of deepening their alienation. Prospects for honor, distinction, liberty, and status may have mattered more to the bondsmen than opportunities for violent retribution. If the dynamics in such situations are not better
understood, it will remain difcult to comprehend why ship captains could
condently assign armed captives to keep watch over disarmed captives on
late seventeenth-century British slaving ships, a phenomenon that historian
David Eltis has recently described. Fears about what slaves would do if
armed may tell more about the anxieties and needs of the slaveholding class in
the Americas than about the likely behavior of enslaved men. Such anxieties,
perhaps, arose as much from prejudice and ideology as from a careful measure
of probable outcomes.
Ideology, in fact, may have mattered as much as fear in discouraging the
arming of slaves in the Americas. Making soldiers into slaves promised a
violation of conventions, a dramatic innovation in what it meant to be a
soldier and what it meant to be a slave. The arming of slaves seemed at once to
accord enslaved men respect and degrade the honor traditionally associated
with military service. In both respects, classical precedents proved inuential
in the Americas. The ideal soldier in Greece and Rome was a free citizen.

The Arming of Slaves

347

Military service was a privilege as much as a duty. It drew on and conveyed

honor. Those ideals, as Peter Hunt has argued here and elsewhere, led ancient
chroniclers to understate the extent to which slaves served in the Athenian
army and navy. And that tradition of excluding slaves from service and
minimizing the service that slaves actually rendered, provided an institutional
legacy of its own for European settlers in the Americas in the early sixteenth
century and after. This kind of explanation, of course, with its emphasis on
cultural traditions, merely restates the problem in a different form. It does not
make clear why ancient precedents should have been so powerful. The comparatively rapid rise and fall of military slavery in Korea and Russia during the
early modern period demonstrates the possibilities for signicant institutional
change in methods of recruitment and mobilization of manpower, even in the
face of established traditions. The power of institutional legacies also fails to
explain why military slavery failed to develop in Europe, despite centuries of
exposure to the powerful example presented by the mamluk
state and the
Ottoman Empire. In short, the question of why opposition to the systematic
arming of slaves had such a long life in European states would benet from
further reection. It may be that a study of European perception of military
slavery in Islamic and African states would reveal much about the ideological
restraints on institutional innovation within Europe during the medieval and
early modern eras.
It would seem, in any case, that the economic origins and economic orientation of slavery in the Americas must have been especially important to inhibiting the use of slaves in military roles, perhaps as important as the fear of slave
revolts and perhaps as important as received ideals about the social roles of
slaves and the proper character of the soldier. Europeans acquired slaves from
Africa and transported them to the Americas in order to make money, not war,
a fact that limited the options available to those later interested in the arming
of slaves for battle. Diverting the workforce from protable labor into military
service always looked to slaveholders like a threat to their investment, especially since a prolonged tour of duty seemed to render bondsmen unt for
agricultural labor in the aftermath. This was why colonial and imperial governments that hoped to enlist slaves for battle offered slaveholders compensation. Without compensation, the arming of slaves represented not only a
threat to an investment but also an expropriation of property, a severe and
involuntary tax. And it should be noted, in this regard, that compensation gured centrally in the arming of slaves in situations as diverse as the late Roman Republic, late seventeenth-century Morocco, and the Paraguayan War in
nineteenth-century Brazil. For even with compensation, slaveholders could
still regard the arming of slaves as a violation of their rights, since property in

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Christopher Leslie Brown

slaves was sometimes understood as distinct from property in things, from

property in other forms of transferable wealth. Slaveholders often thought of
enslaved men and women as dependents, as well as property. For this reason,
they could experience the appropriation of slaves by the state in time of war as
a violation of the household, as a challenge to their patrimonial rights. Even in
times of need, as a consequence, slaveholders in the Americas often insisted
that only they had the right to vest slaves with arms. In this way, opposition to
the arming of slaves in the Americas could serve as a protest against an aggrandized state or against a threat to aristocratic autonomy, as an expression, in
short, of political and economic interests, more than an articulation of fears or
social ideals.
The importance of slaveholder opposition highlights a crucial but overlooked obstacle to the arming of slaves in the Americas. The governing authoritiesimperial, federal, colonial, and localusually possessed no slaves of
their own. That situation stands in sharp contrast to the circumstances obtaining in much of Africa and the Islamic world, where military slaves, by denition, were usually the slaves of the state or the personal slaves of the ruler,
senior ofcers, or warlords. Crown slaves existed in limited proportions in the
Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where they served primarily in public works.
Spanish ofcials purchased from Atlantic merchants more than four thousand
African captives, most of whom were men, and assigned those slaves to the
reconstruction of Cuban forts after the British occupation of Havana in 1762
and 1763. The British state, as well, possessed more than ten thousand slaves
of its own in the West India Regiments by the early nineteenth century. But
for reasons that need further research, the crowns of Europe seem not to have
considered purchasing slaves en masse to advance the ends of state. The expense alone may have been prohibitive. The imperial and colonial governments almost certainly would have found it beyond their capacity to compete
with slaveholders in the Americas for the labor of enslaved men. Such innovations, moreover, may have seemed unnecessary at the time. The manpower
available through more conventional channels perhaps answered the demands
decided by restricted ambitions. The British, for example, organized the West
Indian Regiments only in a moment of acute need. Yet need, of course, is a
matter of subjective perception rather than objective fact. Slaveholders in the
Americas elected to accept defeat in countless instances rather than systematically admit slaves into the ranks. The choices made by the Confederacy during
the American Civil War demonstrate clearly how an honorable defeat could be
understood as preferable to a dishonorable victory won with the assistance of
slaves. The widespread employment of slaves could have enabled military and
political options that authorities in the Americas never contemplated. But

The Arming of Slaves

349

such possibilities were hampered severely by the institutional barriers that

discouraged the creation of various forms of government slaveholding.
Ultimately, the arming of slaves as a subject of historical analysis needs to be
situated within broader questions regarding the mobilization of manpower,
the resources available to the state, and the conventions of warfare. At the
same time the subject opens up new ways to approach the now-familiar problems regarding the dynamics of power within slave societies, the nature of
domination and resistance, and the paradoxes of mastery and enslavement. If
the basic outlines of the individual histories have become familiar, the opportunities for cross-cultural study remain abundant. The institutional legacies
and inuences must still be traced. The complex social position of the soldier
of captive origins, in most instances, needs more searching scrutiny. The political consequences of placing slaves in arms can still be pursued with more rigor
and nuance in almost every case. The arming of slaves occurred too frequently,
it shaped institutions and societies too fundamentally, to be treated as a noteworthy exception. Students of slavery will understand their subject better
when they begin to see the arming of slaves as predictable and explicable,
rather than as a paradox or a problem, when they understand, as Peter Hunt
recently has written, that there is nothing inherently contradictory about the
use of slaves in warfare.

Notes
I am pleased to thank Indrani Chatterjee, Hilary-Anne Hallett, Ken Himmelman, and
the contributors to this volume for advice and guidance on this chapter. All references are
to chapters of this book except where indicated. A preliminary version was presented to
the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Memphis, Tennessee,
in the spring of 2003.
1. Douglas H. Johnson, Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, in Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labor (London, 1988), 142.
2. For notable recent attempts to place particular cases in broader context, see Roger
Norman Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats (New Haven, 1979), viiix; Daniel Pipes, Slave
Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (New Haven, 1981), 2445; Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia (Chicago, 1982), 472473; Peter Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and
Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge, 1998), 206218; John Edward Philips,
The Persistence of Slave Ofcials in the Sokoto Caliphate, in Miura Toru and John
Edward Philips, Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study (London, 2000), 216222, 232234; James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship,
and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill, 2002), 127128.
3. For sociological assessments of the practice, see H. J. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches (New York, 1908; 2d rev. ed., 1971), 398403;
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass.,

350

Christopher Leslie Brown

1982), 287293. For a highly detailed study of free black and enslaved military service in
the Americas during the colonial period, see Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The
Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York, 1993).
4. Norbert Rouland, Les esclaves romains en temps de guerre (Brussells, 1977);
Adrian K. Goldsworthy, The Second Punic Wars (London, 2000), 219; C. Martin Wilbur,
Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty (Chicago, 1943), 187193; Keith
Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 b.c. 70 b.c. (Cambridge, 1989)
90; Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 288289; James B. Palais, Confucian Statecraft
and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty (Seattle, 1996),
226228, 249252; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, 1971), 267; Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 467474 (estimate on page 468, quotation on
page 471); Hellie, The Manumission of Russian Slaves, Slavery and Abolition, 10, no.
3 (1989): 3233.
5. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2d ed.
(Cambridge, 2000), 176182; Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The
Womb of Iron and Gold, translated by Alide Dasnois (Chicago, 1991), 166169, 227
230; Babatunde Agiri, Slavery in Yoruba Society in the 19th Century, in Paul Lovejoy,
ed., Ideology of Slavery in Africa (London, 1981), 131136. See also Funso Afolayan,
Warfare and Slavery in 19th Century Yorubaland, in Adeagbo Akinjogbin, ed., War
and Peace in Yorubaland, 17931893 (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1998), 407419, who stresses
that the acquisition of slave soldiers through warfare brought individual warlords to
political and economic power.
6. See, e.g., Myron Echenberg, Slaves into Soldiers: Social Origins of the Tirailleurs
Senegalais, in Paul Lovejoy, ed., Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave
Trade (Madison, 1986), 311334; Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 18571960 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1991). Also see David
Northrup, The Ending of Slavery in the Eastern Belgian Congo, and Allen Isaacman
and Anton Rosenthal, Slaves, Soldiers, and Police: Power and Dependency Among the
Chikunda of Mozambique, ca. 18251920, in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts,
eds., The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988), 470, 239244. For European dependence, more generally, on men of slave origin during the conquest of Africa, see Lovejoy,
Transformations in Slavery, 258259, 269.
7. Salim Kidwai, Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics: New Forms of Bondage in Medieval India, in Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney, eds., Chains of Servitude: Bondage
and Slavery in India (Madras, 1983), 8184; Andr Wink, Al-Hind: The Making of the
Indo-Islamic World, vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 1113th Centuries (Leiden, 1997), 112115.
8. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the
West, 15001800, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1996), 125; James Francis Warren, The Structure
of Slavery in the Sulu Zone in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Slavery and
Abolition, 24, no. 2 (2003):116, 123.
9. The historian Virginia Askan has recently bemoaned the appalling lack of systematic studies of the janissaries. Askan, Whatever Happened to the Jannissaries?
Mobilization for the 17681774 Russo-Ottoman War, War in Society 5, no. 1 (January
1998): 26n. My discussion draws primarily from Askan, Janissaries, in Paul Finkelman

The Arming of Slaves

351

and Joseph C. Miller, eds., Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery (New York, 1998),
443444; Ehud Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle,
1998), 2028; M. L. Bush, Servitude in Modern Times (Cambridge, 2000), 168172;
and Dror Zeevi, Kul and Getting Cooler: The Dissolution of Elite Collective Identity
and the Formation of Ofcial Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, Mediterranean
Historical Review 11, no. 2 (1996), 177195.
10. Johnson, Sudanese Military Slavery, 142. From a very large and sophisticated
literature, see also Johnson, The Structure of a Legacy: Military Slavery in Northeast
Africa, Ethnohistory 36, no. 1 (1989): 7288.
11. In addition to the chapter by Jane Landers in this book, see Matthew Restall,
Black Conquistadores: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America, The Americas 57,
no. 2 (2000): 171205.
12. In addition to Morgan and OShaughnessy, see Jerome Handler, Freedmen and
Slaves in the Barbados Militia, Journal of Caribbean History 19, no. 1 (1984): 125.
13. Allen R. Meyers, Slave Soldiers and State Politics in Early Alawi Morocco,
16881727, International Journal of African Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1983): 40.
Also see the chapter by John Thornton in this book.
14. Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 472.
15. Sean Stilwell, Amana and Asiri: Royal Slave Culture and the Colonial Regime
in Kano, Slavery and Abolition 19, no. 2 (1998): 170.
16. Robert O. Collins, The Nilotic Slave Trade: Past and Present, in Elizabeth Savage, ed., The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Transaharan Slave Trade (London,
1992), 147149.
17. European invaders would have a similar impact elsewhere during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as wars for empire led some slaves in Africa to escape
their bondage by volunteering to serve in colonial armies. Samson P. Ukpabi, Military
Recruitment and Social Mobility in Nineteenth Century British West Africa, Journal of
African Studies 2, no. 1 (1975): 87107; Richard Roberts, The End of Slavery in the
French Soudan, 19051914, in Miers and Roberts, End of Slavery in Africa, 284; Martin
Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), 74.
18. Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, 2d ed. (Cambridge,
U.K., 1998); William D. Phillips Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985); Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (London, 1998).
19. Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 123142, esp. 127129.
20. The notable exception is nineteenth-century Dahomey, where women, many of
slave origins, also served as soldiers and palace guards. See, most recently, Robin Law,
The Amazons of Dahomey, Paideuma 39 (1993): 245260; Stanley B. Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey (New York, 1998); Edna Bay,
Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey (Charlottesville, 1998).
21. Maria Elena Diaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre (Palo
Alto, 2000), 256260.
22. R. S. OFahey, Slavery and Society in Dar Fur, in John Ralph Willis, ed., Slaves
and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. 2, The Servile Estate (London, 1985), 88.

352

Christopher Leslie Brown

23. Sean Stilwell, The Power of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Power: Kinship,
Community and Royal Slavery in Pre-Colonial Kano, 18071903, and John Edward
Philips, The Persistence of Slave Ofcials in the Sokoto Caliphate, in Toru and Philips,
Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa, 117156, 216217. Philips draws his assessment from V. Matheson and M. B. Hooker, Slavery in the Malay Texts: Categories of
Dependency and Compensation, in Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1983), 182208.
24. Zeevi, Kul and Getting Cooler, 182185.
25. On the Nubi of the Sudan, see Johnson, Structure of a Legacy, 8284.
26. Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 576; Meillassoux, Anthropology of Slavery, 169, 171
173, 194.
27. Peter Blanchard, The Language of Liberation: Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence, Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2003): 519.
28. Roger N. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795
1815 (New Haven, 1979) 57; Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Comrades in Arms or Captives
in Bondage: Sudanese Slaves in the Turco-Egyptian Army, 18211865, in Toru and
Philips, Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa, 197214.
29. Agiri, Slavery in Yoruba Society in the 19th Century, 136138.
30. Zeevi, Kul and Getting Cooler, 183.
31. David Ayalon, Mamluk Military Aristocracy During the First Years of the Ottoman Occupation of Egypt, in C. E. Bosworth, C. Issawi, R. Savory, and A. L. Udovitch,
eds., Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis
(Princeton, 1989), 414, as reprinted in Ayalon, Islam and the Abode of War: Military
Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (Aldershot, 1994); Khaled Fahmy, All the Pashas Men:
Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 82
84. The reemergence and terminal decline of the mamluk
in Ottoman Egypt may be
traced in the essays by Michael Winter, Jane Hathaway, Daniel Philip, and Daniel Crecelius in Thomas Phillip and Ulrich Haarmaan, eds., The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics
and Society (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), chaps. 58.
32. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats, 142144; Paul E. Lovejoy and Jan S. Hogendorn,
Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 18971936 (Cambridge, U.K., 1993).
33. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 287293.
34. Taj Hargey, Festina Lente: Slavery, Policy and Practice in the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan, Slavery and Abolition 19, no. 2 (1998): 253.
35. Linda S. Northrup, From Slave to Sultan: The Cause of Al-Mansur Qalawun and
the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria, 678689 a.h./12791290 a.d.
(Stuttgart, 1998), 190.
36. For telling examples that detail the macro and micro dimensions of this trade see,
respectively, Andrew Ehrenkreutz, Strategic Implications of the Slave Trade Between
Genoa and Mamluk Egypt in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century, in A. L.
Udovitch, ed., The Islamic Middle East, 7001900: Studies in Economic and Social
History (Princeton, 1984) 335345; Douglas H. Johnson, Recruitment and Entrapment
in Private Slave Armies: The Structure of the Zaraib in the Southern Sudan, in Elizabeth

The Arming of Slaves

353

Savage, ed., The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade
(Portland, Ore., 1992), 162173.
37. This is the point of departure, for example, for two well-known works: Pipes,
Slaves and Soldiers, and Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic
Polity (Cambridge, U.K., 1980).
38. Echenburg, Colonial Conscripts, 810; Anthony Reid, The Decline of Slavery in
Nineteenth-Century Indonesia, in Martin A. Klein, ed., Breaking the Chains: Slavery,
Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, 1993), 7273.
39. Jere L. Bacharach, African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The
Cases of Iraq (869955) and Egypt (8681171), International Journal of Middle East
Studies 13 (1981): 473; Johnson, Sudanese Military Slavery, 145146.
40. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, U.K., 2000),
228229.
41. In addition to his chapter in this book, see Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in
the Greek Historians.
42. It might be observed, moreover, that in Russia, as elsewhere, slaves served as
ghters because commoners, as productive laborers, were deliberately discouraged from
military service. Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 473.
43. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians, 207; Ahmad Alawad
Sikainga, Slavery and Muslim Jurisprudence in Morocco, Slavery and Abolition 19,
no. 2 (1998): 63; Hendrik Kraay, Slavery, Citizenship and Military Service in Brazils
Mobilization for the Paraguayan War, Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 3 (1997): 228256.
44. Hendrik Kraay notes the small number of Crown slaves in nineteenth-century
Brazil in Kraay, Slavery, Citizenship and Military Service, 235236. Crown slavery in
Spanish America is treated most recently in Maria Elena Diaz, The Virgin, the King, and
the Royal Slaves and Evelyn Powell Jennings, State Enslavement in Colonial Havana,
in Verene Shepherd, ed., Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society Since the 17th
Century (Gainesville, 2002), 152182. See also Jennings, In the Eye of the Storm: The
Spanish Colonial State and African Enslavement in Havana, 17631790, Historical
Reections/Rexions Historiques 29, no. 1 (2003): 159162. In addition to the work of
Roger N. Buckley, see, for the British Caribbean, Alvin O. Thompson, Unprotable
Servants: Crown Slaves in Berbice, Guyana, 18081831 (Barbados, 2002).
45. Hunt, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology, 206.

Contributors

Reuven Amitai is Eliyahu Elath Professor of the History of the Muslim Peoples at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
Peter Blanchard is professor of history at the University of Toronto.
Christopher Leslie Brown is associate professor of history at Rutgers University.
David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History emeritus at Yale University.
Laurent Dubois is associate professor of history at Michigan State University.
Ada Ferrer is associate professor of history at New York University.
David Geggus is professor of history at the University of Florida.
Peter Hunt is associate professor of classics at the University of Colorado at
Boulder.
Allen Isaacman is Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global
Change.
Hendrik Kraay is associate professor of history at the University of Calgary.

354

Contributors

355

Jane Landers is associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University.

Philip D. Morgan is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of the American
Revolutionary Era at Princeton University.
Andrew Jackson OShaughnessy is Saunders Director at the Robert H.
Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.
Derek Peterson is lecturer in African history at Cambridge University and a
fellow of Selwyn College.
Joseph P. Reidy is professor of history at Howard University.
John Thornton is professor of history and African American studies at
Boston University.

Index

Abbasid

Caliphate, 41, 4250

Abid Al Bukhari, 335
Abiodun, 8384
Abna Khuras
an,
43
Abolition: of New World slavery, 10; and
Spanish South America, 263, 264265,
268270; and U.S. Civil War, 295. See
also Emancipation
Abu Ish aq
al Mu tasim, 42, 46
Abu Muslim, 42
Abu Shama,

5859
Adams, John, 192

al-Adil,
al-Malik, 54
Adrastos, 18
Aegospotami, battle of, 16
Africa: and Congress of Berlin, 115; map of
Atlantic Africa, xi; military skill of Africans, 9, 181; in slave trade era (1450
1800), xi, 7994, 331332, 343; Southern Africa (17501900), 95119. See
also Angola, Gold Coast, Senegambia,
and Sierra Leone
African Company, 217
African Methodist Episcopal Church, 294
Age of Revolution, 158, 159, 304, 316, 338
Agonal warfare, 14

356

Agricultural slavery, 345

Aguilar, Sebastio Pereira de, 151
Aguilera, Francisco Vicente, 308
Akwamu, 85, 181
Albuquerque, Matias de, 155
Alcidamas, 23
Alexander, Henry, 129
Alexander the Great, 33
Al, Muhammad,

65, 343
Alimao, 114
America. See American Revolution; Colonial Spanish America; U.S. Civil War
American Revolution, 180208; and American use of slaves, 192194, 198, 200,
337; arming slaves in New World prior
to, 180187, 210211; and British use of
slaves, 13, 78, 182, 187192, 198
201, 211, 242, 334, 337, 343; in Caribbean, 194200, 211, 335; slave ight,
336
Amitai, Reuven, 332
Anderson, Fred, 186
Andrade, Jos Rosrio de. See Kanyemba
Anglo-African (New York), 294
Angola, 83, 8687, 90, 336
Antibiastes, 192

Index
Antislavery laws in Spanish South America,
259260, 268
Antislavery movement, 910, 11
Apollonides, 33
Aqtay, 57
Aquino, Toms de, 169
Arab traders, 335336. See also Muslim
military slavery
Arabas, Jack, 200
Araucanian Indians, 121
Arginusae, battle of, 26, 2933
Aristophanes, 28, 31, 32
Aristotle, 45
Army Life in a Black Regiment (Higginson), 284
Arslan, Alp, 51, 53
Artigas, Jos Gervasio, 259, 266
Asante polity, 86
al-Ashraf Khall, al-Malik, 60
Atandepeoples, 113
Athenian navy, 2529
Athens. See Greece, classical period (500
338 BC)
Awoko, Late, 87
Ayacucho, battle of, 266
Ayalon, David, 41, 44, 47, 95, 338
Aybeg, 57
Ayn Jal
ut,
battle of, 60
Ayyubids,

54, 5657, 58, 59

Aztec Empire, 121
Bahr
Mamluks,

55, 58
Bahr
Period, 60
Bahriyya,

5556, 57
Barbados weapons law, 183
Barbot, Jean, 85
Barquq, 62
Barsbay, 63
Barue peoples, 109
Bataillon de Sainte-Lucie, 240
Bataillon des Antilles, 240
Bataillon des Sans-Culottes, 239, 243
Battell, Andrew, 89
Battles: Aegospotami, 16; Arginusae, 26,
2933; Ayacucho, 266; Ayn Jal
ut,
60;
Bayaj, 131132; Boyac, 264; Cairo,
65; Carabobo, 265; Chacabuco, 261;
Chaeronia, 20, 33; Dandanq
an,
51; Fort
Dreadnought, 191; French Guadeloupe,
A ttn, 54; Junn, 266; Kay186, 190; Ha
seri, 64; Maip, 261, 267; Manzikert, 53;
Marathon, 21; Marj Dabiq,

64; Marti-

357

nique, 186, 199; May Revolution of

1810, 258259; Monte de Tabocas, 155;
Pernier, 214; Plataea, 23; les Platons,
219; Puerto Prncipe, 317318; Salvador,
160; San Raphael, 131; Saratoga, 190;
Surprise of Porongas, 161; Sybota, 25;
Talandongo, 87; Trois-Rivires insurrection, 237, 238
Bauvais, 215
Bawol kingdom, 88
Bayaj, battle of, 131132
Bayo, Sisnando, 99
Baybars al-Bunduqdar
al-SA ali
h
al-Najm,
Rukn al-Dn, 56, 57, 58, 60
Beckwith, Christopher, 4647
Beecher, James C., 289
Belgrano, Manuel, 267
Bellesiles, Michael, 183
Benjamin, Judah P., 11, 279
Berbers and sub-Saharan slave trade, 5
Berlin, Ira, 12
Betancourt, Salvador Cisneros, 323324
Biassou, Georges (Jorge), 7, 130135, 221
222
Biassou, Jean-Franois, 130135, 221
222, 225, 226, 227
Birch, Samuel, 191
Black auxiliaries of Carlos IV, 129137,
227, 342, 343
Black Caribs, 240, 241, 248
Black Carolina Corps, 242
Black Caudillo, 134
Black Jacobins, 343
Black Lancers, 160161
Black Pioneers, 191
Black Rangers, 211, 241
Black slaveholders, 8
Blackburn, Robin, 130, 304
Blanchard, Peter, 7, 336
Blue Mountain Maroons, 216. See also
Maroons
Blumenthal, Debra G., 4
Bodyguards: in Africa in slave trade era, 81;
and Aristotle, 45; in Brazil, 4, 151, 152,
154, 170; in Colonial Spanish America,
4; in Greece as protection from slaves,
20; and Lgion de lEgalit, 223; in
Roman times, 4, 331; in Valencia, 4
Bolvar, Simn: challenge to, 269; enlistment of slaves by, 164, 262, 263, 266,
336; as foe of slavery, 264265, 268
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 249250

358

Index

Boroma, Conrado Msussa, 106

Bosman, Willem, 84, 85
Bourbon reform of black militia of Spain,
126127
Boves, Jos Toms, 262, 263, 264
Boyac, battle of, 264
Bradley, Keith, 331
Brazil (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century),
146179; bodyguard use in, 4, 151, 152,
154, 170; and Chikunda, 4, 109; Dutch
Wars (16301654) and colonial defense
(1600s-1810), 154158; independence
and its aftermath, 162167; Paraguayan
War slave recruitment (18641870), 7,
149, 167171, 347; revolutionary and
republican arming of slaves (1817
1845), 158162, 336; weapons legislation, private arming, and self-arming, 6,
7, 11, 149154, 335
The Breaking of a Thousand Swords (Gordon), 47
Britain, 78, 344, 345. See also American
Revolution; Caribbean
British Chasseurs, 224226, 227
British West India Regiments. See West
India Regiments
Brown, William J., 291
Bruix, Baron de, 248249
Buckley, Roger, 8
Bukharans, 45
Bull, William, 185
Bureau of Colored Troops, 285
Burj dynasty, 60
Burjiyya regiment, 63
Burke, Edmund, 188, 190
Burt, William, 194
Butler, Benjamin E., 284
Buwayhids, 50, 51
Caman (or Philibert), 217, 227
Cairo, battle of, 65
Campbell, Archibald, 189190, 196
Campbell, William, 188
Campusano, Alejandro, 258
Canabarro, David, 161
Canary Islands, enslavement of people
from, 6
Cancino, Juan, 312313
Capibaribe, Antonio

Cavalcanti, 155, 165

Carabobo, battle of, 265
Caradeux, Jean-Baptiste de, 217
Caribbean: and American Revolution, 194

200, 211, 335; disease and deaths of

European soldiers in, 9; free black communities in, 340; free soldiers in, 8; fugitive slaves in, 9; lack of racial distinctions
in, 89; map of, xiii; piracy and warfare
in, 6; use of armed slaves in, 180184,
186187, 334, 338. See also Colonial
Spanish America; Cuba; French Caribbean; Haitian Revolution
Caribs, 190
Carolina Corps, 211
Carroll, Charles, 193
Castilla, Ramn, 269
Castro Jack, 107
Caxias, Baron, 161
Ceddo soldiers, 88, 97, 342
Cspedes, Carlos Manuel de, 304307,
309311, 315, 317318, 321
Chacabuco, battle of, 261
Chaeronia, battle of, 20, 33
Chasseurs de Georges III, 220
Chattel slaves, 15, 20, 32,197
Cherokee War of 1760, 185
Chewa polity, 100, 103, 105, 109
Chicandari, Carlos, 114
Chikunda. See Southern Africa (1750
1900)
Children: and armies of Arabs and Turks, 5;
and Chikunda, 100; in classical Greece,
15; dependents and armed slaves, 341
342; and Devshirme system, 87; freedom
for newborns, 259, 266; servile recruitment of, 8788, 8990. See also Family
life
Chimalenzi, Custdio, 101, 106, 108
Chinese, use of bondsmen by, 331
Chinggis Khan, 57
Christian Recorder, 294
Christophe, Henri, 235
Circassian Period, 60, 6263, 95
Cisplatine War, 165
Citizenship, 11, 3031, 32, 293295, 342
Civil War, U.S. See U.S. Civil War
Cleburne, Patrick R., 279280
Clinton, Henry, 190, 191
Clouds (Aristophanes), 32
Cobb, Howell, 1, 279280
Cochrane, Thomas, 265266
Colleton, Peter, 3
Colonial America. See American
Revolution
Colonial Spanish America, 120141; black

Index
auxiliaries of Carlos IV, 129137, 227,
342, 343; bodyguard use in, 4; Bourbon
reform of black militia, 126127; Caribbean, slaves in early defense of, 122124;
conquest, slave auxiliaries in, 121122,
334; creation of free black militias, 124
125; Cuba in eighteenth-century, 127
128; Florida, use of slaves in, 12; and
manumission, 6; and Muslim Spain, 338;
slave volunteers, 125126; slaves against
maroons, 124; Spains black militias in
era of revolution, 128129
Compagnie des Africains (Company of
Africans), 216217, 338
Comparative perspective on arming slaves,
330353; armed slaves, 339344; statecraft and recruitment, 333339; transformations in slavery, 344349
Compensation to owners for enlisted slaves,
6, 10, 347
Condemned slaves, 123
Condential Black Shot, 211
Congress of Angostura, Venezuela, 264
Congress of Berlin, 115
Continental Army, 198
Conversos, 120
Corbet, Nol, 243
Cornwallis, Charles, 190, 191
Coromantees, 181
Cost of slaves, 10, 27
Counter-Reformation, 6
Creek nation, 129
Creten, Esteban, 136
Cropper, John, 200
Crown slaves, 348
Cruden, John, 191
Crusade period, 5, 41, 5356
Cuba: anticolonial insurgency in latenineteenth-century, 11, 304329, 336;
and British occupation, 348; defense of
Spains interest in, 67; eighteenth century, 127128; map of Caribbean, xiii;
portrait of black insurrectionists, 320
324; race in, 319320; and Seven Years
War, 186187, 196. See also Caribbean;
Colonial Spanish America
Cunha, Manuela Carneiro da, 147
Curtin, Philip, 338
Cyrus, 3233
Dahomey Kingdom, 8788
Dalling, John, 196

359

Dalrymple, John, 189

Dancer, Thomas, 196197
Dandanq
an,
battle of, 51
Davis, David Brion, 226
Davis, Jefferson, 11, 278, 279280
Deane, Silas, 190
Debret, Jean-Baptiste, 152
Delgrs, Louis, 244, 250251
Desertions, 34, 16, 267270, 346
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 227, 235
dEstaing, Charles, 194195
Devaux, Diego, 129
Deveaux, Andrew, 199200
Devshirme system, 68, 87
Dias, Henrique, 155156
Dickson, William, 195
Diego el Mulato, 125126
Dieudonn, 225
Diggs, Kitty, 292
A a h,
al-Dn, Sal
54
al-Dn Ayyub,
al-Malik al-SA ali
h Najm, 55
al-Dn Mahm
ud,
Nur,
54
Divine Liberty, War of, 155156, 166
Dixon, Vena, 112
Doctrine of necessity, 3
Douglass, Frederick, 9, 10, 282, 294, 295
Draper, William, 188
Dubois, Laurent, 89
Dunmore, John Murray, 188, 189, 190,
191192, 200
al-Durr, Shajar, 57
Dutch Wars, 148, 152, 154158, 165
Dutch West India Company, 155, 181
Education for soldiers in U.S. Civil War,
293294
Edwards, Bryan, 238239
Eglise, Celestin, 245
Eglise, Franois, 245
Elimination of slavery. See Abolition and
Emancipation
Elite slaves, 227, 333, 335, 340, 342, 343
Eltis, David, 346
Emancipation: in Brazil, 158159, 168
170; in Cuba, 310; in France, 234, 238,
249250; in Guadeloupe, 171, 238,
240241, 244; and right to marry, 243
244; and U.S. Civil War, 284285, 294
295
Emancipation Proclamation, 284285,
294295
Emboabas, War of, 152

360

Index

Emperors Battalion of Constitutional and

Independent Freedmen, 163
England. See American Revolution; Britain
Epaminondas, 23
Equal pay for black soldiers in U.S. Civil
War, 290, 292
Escudero, Corporal Alonso, 123
Eunuchs, 47
Eustache, 242
Faal, Lat Sukaabe, 88
Family life, 5, 27, 48, 88, 127, 223, 268,
336, 341. See also Children; Marry, right
to; Mating of slaves; Matrilineal system
of descent; Patrilineal system of descent
of Chikunda; and Women
Farroupilha Rebellion, 160162, 167, 170
Fedon, Julian, 241
Ferrer, Ada, 10, 336
Fifteenth Amendment, 275, 296
Fifty-fth Massachusetts Volunteers, 290
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, 275,
288, 290, 291
Firearms: and American Revolution, 190
191, 192, 193, 195; in Brazil, 150, 152
154, 157; and Chikunda, 96, 101, 103;
in French Caribbean, 212, 251; and Haitian Revolution, 210, 212, 216, 220; and
Muslim military slavery, 6465, 66; in
New World, 10, 95, 181, 183187
First Rhode Island Regiment, 193
First South Carolina Volunteers, 284
Flight. See Runaway slaves and Maroons
Fort Dreadnought, battle of, 191
Forten, James, 200
Foubert, Bernard, 213
Fourteenth Amendment, 275, 296
France, 126127, 129137, 154, 190, 227,
248249, 343. See also French Caribbean; Haitian Revolution; entries starting
with French
Free black communities, 132, 340
Free womb laws, 158, 170, 265
Freedom for slaves. See Abolition; Emancipation; Manumission
French and Indian War, 186. See also Seven
Years War
French Caribbean, 233254; contagious
republic, 240242; danger of soldiers,
247251; map of Caribbean, xiii; republican corsairs, 246247; slaves into soldiers, 236240; soldiers as citizens, 242

246; and transformations in slavery, 344.

See also Haitian Revolution
French Code Noir of 1685, 183
French Guadeloupe, battle of, 186, 190. See
also French Caribbean
French Revolution, 9
French Revolutionary Wars, 7, 197, 199,
220229, 234251
Frogs (Aristophanes), 31
Fugitive slave act, 282283
Fugitive slaves. See Maroons and Runaway
slaves
Fuller, Stephen, 195
Futa Tooro kingdom, 88
Gadsden, Christopher, 193
Gage, Thomas, 188
Gaha, 83
Galphin, George, 191
Glvez, Bernardo de, 128
Gates, Horatio, 192
Gdon, Pierre, 243
Geggus, David, 8, 338
Germain, George, 198
al-Ghawr, Qanush, 64
Ghaznawids, 5052
Ghulams.

See Muslim military slavery

Giles, Edward, 193
Glory (lm), 275
Glover, Martha, 293
Gold Coast of Africa, 8486, 181
Gmez, Mximo, 312, 313
Gonzlez de Herrera, Pedro, 124
Gooding, James Henry, 290291
Gordon, Matthew, 47
Gordon Riots, 198
Goyrand, Commissioner, 242, 244
Grande Anse model, 224
Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, 132
Grand Army of the Republic, 297
Grant, Jehu, 200
Grant, Ulysses S., 288289
Great Fulo, Empire of, 88
Great Jolof, Kingdom of, 88
Greece, classical period (500338 BC), 3
4, 1439; Arginusae and its aftermath,
2933; Athenian navy, slaves in, 2529;
chattel slaves in, 15; and doctrine of
necessity, 3; evidence and its difculties,
1619; Helot soldiers, 2329; map of, ix;
property issues in, 3; rebellion or desertion of slaves in, 34; Spartas Helots, 3,

Index
2123, 334; stereotypes of slaves in, 3;
types of slave use in, 15, 1921; warfare
in, 1415
Greene, Nathanael, 193194
Grey, Charles, 240
Guadeloupe. See French Caribbean
Guanches, 6
Guerra Chiquita (Little War), 319320
Guillermn, 324
Guns. See Firearms
Gutirrez, Andrs, 128
Gylippus, 23
Haitian Revolution, 209232; alliances
with insurgents, 220223; change in
identity of armed slaves in, 227; development of system of arming slaves in, 338
339; effect of, 257; and European combatants, 334; fears prompted by, 157; formal corps, 223226, 227; fugitive slaves
in, 336, 337; and independence, 236,
343; irregular corps, 214220, 226;
leaders and heroes of, 67, 201; and
long-term consequences of enlistment,
227228; as quasi-mamluk
state, 343;
map of Caribbean, xiii; plantation
guards, 8, 10, 212214, 226; preRevolutionary developments, 209212.
See also Toussaint Louverture
Hall, Samuel, 136
Han Dynasty, 331
Hannibal, 331
Hargey, Taj, 344
Harris, Joseph J., 292
A ttn, battle of, 54
Ha
Hays, Joseph, 236, 237
Hellie, Richard, 331
Helots. See Greece, classical period (500
338 BC)
Hernndez Girn, Francisco, 121
Herodotus, 23
Higgins, Kathleen J., 154
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 284, 288
Homer, 17
Homesteads for slaves, 132
Hoplites, 3, 14, 1718, 1921, 24. See also
Greece, classical period (500338 BC)
Hopson, Peregrine, 186
Howe, William, 189, 190
Hugues, Victor: arming corsairs by, 246;
and emancipation, 171, 238, 240241;
envoys of, 242; removal of, 248; revolu-

361

tionary army of, 238240, 242243,

343; on slave soldiers in battle, 239
Hleg, 5758
Hunt, Peter, 3, 347
Hunter, David, 283284
Hunter, John, 196, 197
Hyacinthe, 217218, 224, 227
Hyacinthes Gendarmerie, 217218
Hyperides, 20
Ibn al-Furat,
56
A
Ibn Hawqal,
46
Ibn Khaldun,
48, 6668
A ulun,
Ibn T
Ahmad,

49
Identity of bondsmen and slaves, 340
341
Iliad (Homer), 17, 23
Imbangala, 8990
Inca Empire, 121
India, 5, 57
Innes, Alexander, 190
Insurrections. See Revolts and insurrections
Iqfta
system, 5253
Iranian Ghurids, 51
Irene, 318
Irwin, Robert, 61
Isert, Paul Erdmann, 87
Islamic military slavery. See Muslim military slavery
al-Istakhr, 46
Jacobo, Juan Jorge, 134, 135136
al-Ja hi
z, 46
Jamaica Squadron, 197
Jamaican Maroon War, 211. See also
Maroons
Jamdaris, 56
Janissary corps, 6566, 87, 337338, 339
al-Jashnak

r, Baybars, 63
Jason, Louis, 244245
Jean Kinas Corps, 218220. See also Kina,
Jean
Jean-Baptiste, 237
Jeegi, Samba Gelaajo, 88
Jews and Spain. See Spain
Jihadiya, 332333, 337
Joo IV, 155
Joaquina, 114
Johnson, Andrew, 10
Johnson, Douglas H., 333
Jornal system of slavery, 27
Julio-Claudian Roman emperors, 4

362

Index

Jumcourt, Hanus de, 218

Junn, battle of, 266
Kajoor kingdom, 8889
Kandi, Shaykh Buro, 82
Kano emirate, 340
Kanyemba, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115
Kasanje state, 90
Kayseri, battle of, 64
Kea, Ray, 85
Kench, Thomas, 192193
Kennedy, Hugh, 45
Keppel, Augustus, 187
Ketbuqa, 58
Khurasan, 42, 45, 50
Kimik tribe, 48
Kina, Jean, 219220, 224, 227, 228
Knyras, 17
Kongo kingdom, 8283
Konny, John, 86
Korea, military slavery in, 331, 345, 347
Koster, Henry, 150, 152
Kraay, Hendrik, 6, 7, 335
Ku Klux Klan, 296
Labatut, Pierre, 163164, 165, 167, 171
Laborde plantations, 213214
Lacharrire-Larery, 236, 237
Lambert, Jean-Joseph, 242
Landers, Jane, 6, 338, 342
Langston, John Mercer, 282
Languages: Chi-Chikunda, 106; Qipchaq
Turkish, 62; Shona, 113
Laporte, Crepein, 245
Laporte, Marc, 245
Latchom, 200
Laurens, John, 193
Leach, Patsy, 293
Lee, Arthur, 188
Lee, Robert E., 11, 279280
Legion of Equality (Lgion de lEgalit),
223224
Legn, Jos Antonio, 321322, 324
Lescallier, Daniel, 251
Leslie, Alexander, 192
Ligon, Richard, 183
Lima, Antonio, 267
Lincoln, Abraham: and black troops, 10,
11, 281; call for volunteers by, 281; on
Confederate treatment of black prisoners,
291; and slavery, 283, 284; soldiers view
of, 295; and suffrage rights, 294

Livy, 331
Locke, John, 23, 4
Louis IX, 55, 56
Louisiana Native Guard, Second, 288
Louverture. See Toussaint Louverture
Lucum, Genaro, 318
Lunda kingdom, 103
Macaulay, Zachary, 200
Macedonians, 33
Maceo, Antonio, 318319
Mackesy, Piers, 182183
Madison, James, 136
Magn, 308
Mahdist resistance, 66
Maip, battle of, 261, 267
Malenfant, Charles, 218
Malheiro, Perdigo, 170
Mamluk
Period, 60
Mamluk
Sultanate, 41, 62, 65, 6668. See
also Muslim military slavery
Mamluk
system. See Muslim military
slavery
Mamluk-Ilkhanid

war, 61
Mamzelle, 218
Manganja polity, 100, 109
Maniel maroons, 210. See also Maroons
Mansur ibn Masud al Zari, Pasha, 8182
Manuel, Jos, 307, 308
Manumission: and American Revolution, 8,
200201; in Brazil, 155156, 158159,
162, 165, 166169; in classical Greece,
20, 27, 29, 3031; in French Caribbean,
211; and imported mawali,
44; and military service, 6, 333, 339; and Muslim
military slavery, 62, 341; patterns of,
344; in Spanish South America, 258; and
U.S. Civil War, 9
Many Thousands Gone (Berlin), 12
Manzikert, battle of, 53
Maponda, 99
Maps: of Atlantic Africa, xi; of Caribbean,
xiii; of Chikunda conquest states, 113; of
Classical Greece, ix; of Mediterranean
and Islamic World, x; of South America,
xii; of Zambesi prazos, 98
al-Maqrz, 55, 61
Maragogipe, Baron, 153
Marathon, battle of, 21
Marin plantation, 213
Marj Dabiq,

battle of, 64
Mrmol, Donato, 312, 313314

Index
Maroons, 6, 9, 124, 135, 181, 220, 240,
316 See also Blue Mountain Maroons,
Jamaican Maroon War, Maniel Maroons,
Runaway slaves, and Treaty Maroons
Marry, right to, 243244. See also Family
life
Mart, Jos, 323324
Martn, Diego, 125126
Martin, Josiah, 188
Martinique, battle of, 186, 199
Massachusetts Volunteers, 275, 288, 290,
291
Massuampaca, 99
Mathew, Edward, 196
Mathew, William, 186
Mating of slaves, 48. See also Family life
Matrilineal system of descent, 105. See also
Family life
Mattos, Loureno de, 99
Mawal
system, 4344, 45
May Revolution of 1810, 258259
Mbandi, Ngola, 83
McGillivray, John, 197
Menndez de Avils, Pedro, 122123
Mentor, tienne, 249
Metics, 20
Midas, 17
Militia Act, 283
Miranda, Francisco de, 262
Miston, Augustin, 244
Miyares, Enrique Hernndez, 324
Moncada, Guillermo, 323, 324
Monckton, Robert, 186, 199
Mongols: end of rule of, 59; Golden Horde,
61, 63; and military slaves, 55; and Seljuqs, 53; wars of, 5, 5758, 59, 60,
331
Monte de Tabocas, battle of, 155
Moreno, Juan, 126
Morgan, Philip D., 78, 335
Morillo, Pablo, 263, 264, 266
Moriscos, 6, 120
Mpande, Diamond, 107
al-Muhallab, Muhammad

b. Yazd, 44
al-Mulk, Nizam,
52
Muslim, Eastern, and Black African Slaves
in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Blumenthal), 4
Muslim military slavery, 4078; and children, 5; crusade period, 5, 41, 5356; as
defenders of social order, 335; development of, 56, 336337, 338, 345; estab-

363

lishment of Mamluk
sultanate, 5659;
importance of Mamluk
system, 6668,
342; longevity of, 9596, 332333; loyalty to former masters, 341; map of Mediterranean and Islamic World, x; origins
of military slavery in caliphate, 4250;
and political resistance, 334; privileges
of, 340; quarter of millennium of Mamluk
rule, 5965; requirement for steady
supply of slaves, 345; slave soldiers in era
of caliphal disintegration, 5053; vestigial remnants and variants of Mamluk

system, 6566
al-Mutasim, Abu Ish aq,
42, 44, 46, 47,
48, 49
al-Mutawakkil, Caliph, 49
Mutinies, 346. See also Revolts and
insurrections
Mwanza, Sunda, 110, 112
al-Na
sir Muhammad,

al-Malik, 6062, 63
Nabuco de Arajo, Jos Toms, 168169
Nago (Yoruba), 164
Napoleonic Wars, 7, 8, 198199, 257
Nario, Antonio, 263
al-Na
sir Hasan, 62
Natal alienation, 4
Native Guard, 284
Ndongo kingdom, 80, 8283, 86, 90
Neodamodeis, 23
Neo-mamluk
system, 65
Nestor, 23
Nguni peoples, 109110
Nhema, 99
Njinga Mbandi, Ana de Sousa, 83, 87, 90
Norris, Robert, 88
Northrup, Linda S., 345
Nova Scotia, free blacks in, 200, 201
Nsenga polity, 103, 112, 113
Nubi of Sudan, 341
al-Nuwayr, 55, 57
Oghuz peoples, 51
Oglethorpe, James, 185
Olympia, 22
OShaughnessy, Andrew J., 78, 335
Ottoman Empire: ethnic identities of slaves
in, 341; janissary corps in, 87, 337338;
and mamluks,

41; and Muslim military

slavery, 41, 6365, 343; and Spanish,
339
Oyo Empire, 8384, 97, 343

364

Index

Pez, Jos Antonio, 264

Paixo, Manoel da, 152
Palmares, 153
Pancleon, 32
Paraguayan War, 7, 149, 167171, 347
Parker, Geoffrey, 332
Pasha, Judar, 81
Pasha, Mehmed Ali, 332
Patrilineal system of descent of Chikunda,
105106, 112113. See also Family life
Patterson, Orlando, 4, 68, 344
Paul, Jrgen, 41
Payments: compensation to owners for
enlisted slaves, 6, 10, 347; equal pay for
black soldiers in U.S. Civil War, 290, 292;
of slaves and Muslim military slavery
(dwan),

42, 43
Payson, Willie, 113
Peace of Kallias, 16
Pdre, Marin, 245, 248249
Pedro I, 158, 163, 164
Pedro II, 168
Plage, Magloire, 244, 250
Peloponnesian Navy, 16, 19
Peloponnesian War, 1517, 19, 20, 22, 26,
28, 29, 31, 32
Perdigo Malheiro, Antonio Marques, 146,
147
Perkins, John, 197
Pernier, battle of, 214
Persian Wars, 16
Ption, Alexandre, 263264
Phelps, John W., 284
Philibert (or Caman), 217, 227
Philip II (Spain), 122
Philip of Macedon, 20
Philipsburg Proclamation, 190
Phormio, 25
Piar, Manuel, 264, 268
Pinckard, George, 201
Pinckney, Charles, 186
Piero, Ramn, 262
Pipes, Daniel, 9596, 338
Piracy in Caribbean, 6
Plantation system: and American Revolution, 182, 183, 185, 201; in Atlantic
Islands, 6; in Brazil, 147, 151, 152, 155;
in Caribbean, 122, 126; comparative
view of, 331; in Cuba, 304305; development of, 338; in French Guadeloupe,
238, 250; and Haitian Revolution, 212
214, 226, 227, 229, 238, 250, 251; in

New World, 8, 10, 132, 181, 209, 245,

249, 261; and slave trading, 345
Plataea, battle of, 23
Plataeans, 30, 31, 32
Plato, 3132
les Platons, battle of, 219
Polverel, tienne, 223224, 228, 234
Pommegorge, Pruneau de, 88
Ponche Verde peace treaty, 161
Popos, 83, 87
Portugal: in Angola, 83, 8687, 90, 336;
and crown slaves, 348; in Indian Ocean,
64; and Muslim occupation, 56; and
Southern Africa, 4, 95119. See also Brazil (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century)
Potomac Flotilla, 287
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, 284
Price of slaves. See Cost of slaves
Priol, Zacaras, 313, 314
Prisby, Simon, 291
Prisoners of war in U.S. Civil War, 291292
Proctor, Tony, 136
Puerto Prncipe, 317318
Punic Wars, 331
Qaitbay, 6364
Qalawun, 60, 61, 63
Qipchaq period, 60
Qipchaq Turkish language, 62
Qipchas, 55, 57
Quarles, Benjamin, 193
Queen Anns War, 184
Quinto, 169
Qutuz, 58, 60
Radiyya,

57
Ramn, 321, 324
al-Rashd, al-Amn, 43, 44
al-Rashd, al-Mamun,
43, 44, 46
al-Rashd, Har
un,
42, 43
Rebellions. See Revolts and insurrections
Rebelo, Gonalo, 155156
Recaste (rescue) laws, 259260
Reconstruction Acts of 1867, 11, 296
Regime of equality, 323
Regiment of Libertos, 259
Reglamento de Libertos, 311
Reid, Anthony, 332
Reidy, Joseph P., 9, 1011, 342
Reimbursement for injured or lost slaves,
10
Religion, 105106, 134

Index
Republican Party, 11, 296
Revolts and insurrections: anticolonial
insurgency in late-nineteenth-century, 11,
302329; in Brazil, 153; by Chikunda,
103, 109, 342; in Colonial Spanish America, 123; in Danish West Indies, 181; in
Greece, classical period, 20; in Grenada,
241; in Guadeloupe, 237, 250251;
Imbangala and potential for, 8990;
incitement as war tactic, 34; in Jamaica,
182; and opposition to arming slaves,
257; by Roman slaves, 34; in Saint Domingue, 129130; in Salvador, 154; in St.
Lucia, 241242; in Trois-Rivires, 237,
238; and West India Regiments, 342. See
also Farroupilha Rebellion, Haitian Revolution, Mutinies, and Sabinada
Rebellion
Rhode Island Regiment, First, 193
Rice, Spottswood, 292
Richepance, Antoine, 250251
Rigaud, Andr, 228
Roa, Ramon, 321322
Rochambeau, Donatien, 223
Rolle, Denys, 200
Roman Empire, 4, 6, 34, 331, 347
Rosas, Pedro, 265
Rouvray, Lenoir de, 224
Royal African Company, 3
Rugendas, Johann Moritz, 150, 152
Runaway slaves: and arming of slaves, 336,
337; in Brazil, 155, 166167; in Caribbean, 9; and Chikunda, 109; in Colonial
Spanish America, 128129; in Spanish
South America, 258, 259, 261, 263, 269
270; and U.S. Civil War, 10. See also
Maroons
Russia, military slavery in, 331, 341, 345,
347
Rustn, 323
Sabinada Rebellion, 159160, 162, 343
Said, Pasha, 82
Saint Domingue, 129131. See also Haitian
Revolution
Saladin, 54
A h Ayyub,
al-Sal
al-Malik, 5455, 56
SA ali
hiyya,

55
Salvador, siege of, 160
Sam
anids,

50
San Martn, Jos de, 260261, 265266,
267, 336

365

San Raphael, battle of, 131

Sanguily, Manuel, 322323
Santander, Francisco de Paula, 264
265
Saratoga, battle of, 190
Sassanian Empire, 42
Saxton, Rufus, 284
Scythian archers in Athens, 19, 335
Second Conscation Act, 283
Second Louisiana Native Guard, 288
Segui, Benjamin, 135136
Sejourna, Peper, 249
Self-preservation, 3; Brazil (seventeenth
to nineteenth century), 6, 7, 11, 149
154, 335
Selim I, 64
Seljuq Empire, 5053
Selous, Frederick, 110
Semana Illustrada (Rio de Janeiro), 169
Seminoles, 129, 136
Sena polity, 99
Senegambia, 8889, 97
Seven Years War, 182, 186187, 190, 196,
198, 211, 240. See also French and
Indian War
Sexual slavery, 339
Shaban, Muhammad, 46
Sharpe, Granville, 201
Shaw, Robert Gould, 291
Sherman, William Tecumseh, 288289
Shii Fa
timids, 53, 54
Shii Iranians, 50
Shona languages, 113
Siblas, Doumet de, 8889
Sierra Leone, 8, 200
Siete Partidas, 6
Sikadinger, 85
Silva, Antnio Lobo da, 99
Sinturau, Emma, 113
Sirkuh,
54
Siyasat-n

amah

(The Book of Statecraft) (alMulk), 52

Slave elites. See Elite slaves
Slave ight. See Runaway slaves
Slave societies, 7, 80
Slave trade in Africa. See Africa
Smalls, Robert, 277278
Smith, George E., 287
Snelgrave, William, 88
Social death, 4, 68, 104, 182
Sokoto Caliphate, 335, 340
Songhay, 81

366

Index

Sonthonax, Lger Flicit, 130, 223224,

234, 238
Sousa, Ferno de, 83
South America. See Brazil (Seventeenth to
Nineteenth Century); Spanish South
America
South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, 287
South Carolina Pioneer Corps, 180, 199
South Carolina Volunteers, First, 284
Southern Africa (17501900), 4, 95119,
335, 336; Chikunda conquest states,
110115; Chikunda on Prazos, 97104;
identify of military slaves in, 341; making
the Chikunda, 104110, 341; map of
Chikunda conquest states, 113; map of
Zambesi prazos, 98; rebellion of
Chikunda, 342
Souza Lima, Antonio de, 164
Spain: and arming slaves, 339; black slaves
in late medieval period in, 4; Code of
1680, 183; and crown slaves, 348; heterogeneity of army of, 120121; holy
reconquest of, 6; household slaves in, 1;
Jews in, 6, 120; and manumission, 6;
and Moors, 56; and revolt in Saint Domingue, 130131; and sub-Saharan
slave tade, 5; and sugar plantations, 6.
See also Colonial Spanish America;
Cuba; Haitian Revolution; Spanish South
America
Spanish American Wars of Independence, 7,
255270, 337. See also Spanish South
America
Spanish Code of 1680, 183
Spanish South America, 255273; and abolition, 263, 264265, 268270; African
slaves military service in, 256; antislavery legislation in, 268; conduct of soldiers
in, 267268; female slaves in, 268; freeing of recruits, 268; and manumission,
258; map, xii; number of slaves in, 256;
opposition to arming slaves, 256257;
recruitment of slaves in, 258261, 265
267; slave activism in, 268; slave ight,
336; struggle for independence, 7, 257
258, 261268, 334, 336; survival of
slavery in, 268269; and transformations in slavery, 344; widows rights,
341342
Spartans, 16, 22, 24. See also Greece, classical period (500338 BC)
Stereotypes of slaves, 1, 3

Stiel, Murphy, 191

Stilwell, Sean, 340
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 282283, 289
Strepsiades, 32
Sudanese slave soldiers of Kasala, 342
Suffrage rights for African American men,
11, 294, 296
Sultanate of Dehli, 57
Surprise of Porongas, 161
Sweeny, John, 294
The Swiss (Les Suisses), 214216, 227,
228, 338
Sybota, battle of, 25
A
al-Tabar
, 44
Talandongo, battle of, 87
Tamerlane, 63
Tande, 112, 113
Tantalid Pelops, 18
Tartars, 58
Tawara polity, 99, 113
Teamoh, George, 281
The Ten Thousand, 3233
Ten Years War, 320, 322, 323. See War
(First) for Cuban Independence
Test Acts, 198
Thebes, 22
Theodore, Claude, 245
Thetes, 21
Third Battalion of Cuba, 136
Third Crusade, 54
Thirteenth Amendments, 275, 296
Thirty, oligarchy of, 32
Thirty Years War, 89
Thirty-third U.S. Colored Infantry, 284
Thomas, Lorenzo, 285
Thorton, John, 331332
Thucydides, 16, 17, 23, 24
Thurians, 25
Tilleman, Eric, 85
Timbuktu, 8182
Tirailleurs Senegalais, 332, 341
Tithnos, 17
Tollenare, Louis F., 159
Tonga polity, 99, 112, 113
Torre, Pedro de la, 307
Toussaint Louverture: and Bissaus army in
Saint Domingue, 130131; capture of,
250; and chasseurs and auxiliaries, 226,
227; defeat of British by, 248; fear of, 1;
ghting for Spain by, 7, 130131, 221,
222; French service by, 130, 131, 223

Index
224, 234; and Haitian independence,
343; imprisonment of, 131, 220; as
leader of colony, 235236, 249250,
251, 343; military service of, 67; victory against French, 236; and War of
the South, 228. See also Haitian
Revolution
Transformations in slavery, 344349
Treaty maroons, 210. See also Maroons
Trois-Rivires insurrection, 237, 238
Tropas Auxilaires de Carlos IV. See Black
auxiliaries of Carlos IV
Turansh

ah,
56
Turcomans, 51, 52, 54
Turks, 5, 43. See also Muslim military
slavery
Twenty-fth Army Corps, 291
Two Treatises of Government (Locke),
23
Tyrtaeus, 1718, 32
Ullman, Daniel, 292
Umayyads, 42, 43
Uncle Toms Cabin (Stowe), 282283
Undi, 100
U.S. Civil War, 274303; and abolition of
slavery, 295; attack on slavery by Union,
282285; black soldiers family relationships, 292293; citizenship rights for soldiers in, 11, 293295, 342; Confederacys use of slaves in, 1, 2, 9, 1011,
274280, 348; interest in arming slaves,
316; and literacy for soldiers, 293294;
prisoners of war in, 291292; Union
troops, 10, 11, 275, 280296, 334;
widows rights, 341342
Valiente, Juan, 121122
Vsquez, Josef, 131132, 133
Vaughan, John, 199, 241242
Vernon, Edward, 184, 186
Veterans: African American veterans after
Civil War, 296297; African American
veterans after World War I, 11; Brazilian
slave status after ghting, 169; treatment
of, post-war, 343
Vieira, Joo Fernandes, 155, 165
Villandry, Breton de la, 217
Villegegu, Pierre, 239
Virginia Regiment, 186
Voelz, Peter, 210211
Vulcain, Jean-Baptiste, 243

367

Waalo kingdom, 8889

Walker, William, 290
War (First) for Cuban Independence, 304
318. See Ten Years War
War (Third) for Cuban Independence,
319
War of American Independence, 78, 180,
182, 187201, 211, 242
War of Divine Liberty, 155156, 166
War of Haitian Independence, 228
War of the Emboabas, 152
War of the South, 228
Wars: Cherokee, 185; Cisplatine, 165;
Dutch, 148, 152, 154158, 165; French
and Indian, 186; French Revolutionary,
7, 197, 199, 220229, 234251; Guerra
Chiquita, 319320; Jamaican Maroon,
211; Mamluk-Ilkhanid,

61; Mongols, 5,
5758, 59, 60, 331; Napoleonic, 7, 8,
198199, 257; Paraguayan, 7, 149, 167
171, 347; Peloponnesian, 1517, 19, 20,
22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32; Persian, 16; Punic,
331; Queen Anns, 184; Seven Years,
182, 186187, 190, 196, 198, 211, 240;
Spanish American Wars of Independence,
7, 255270, 337; Ten Years, 320, 322,
323; Thirty Years, 89; World War I, 11;
and Yamassee, 2, 184. See also Haitian
Revolution and U.S. Civil War
Washington, George, 191
Weber, Max, 95
Wentworth, Thomas, 184
West India Regiments: establishment of,
180, 199, 227, 334, 345, 348; and Haitian Revolution, 8, 228; and recruitment,
220, 348; revolt by, 342
Williams, Henry, 128129
Williams, William, 128129
Williamson, Adam, 225
Wink, Andre, 338
Witten, Juan Bautista (Prince), 134, 135
136
Witten, Rafaela, 134
Women: and Chikunda, 105106, 107,
108109, 112113; in classical Greece,
15; dependents and armed slaves, 341
342; female sultans, 57; freedom of
wives in Brazil, 168; leadership in
Angola, 83, 87, 90; segregation of, 339;
and sexual slavery, 339; and slave soldiers in eighteenth-century Cuba, 127; in
Spanish South America, 268, 341342;

368

Index

Women (continued)
and U.S. Civil War, 293; widows rights,
341342. See also Family life
World War I and black veterans, 11
Xavier, Jos da Costa, 103
Xenophon, 16, 20, 33

Yamassee War, 2, 184

Yanga, 124
Yaqut,
48
Ziyad
b. Abhi, Ubaydallah,
45
Zengi, 54
Zspedes, Vicenete Manuel, 129